April 2005 Archives

Lunde mi normtestiĝis anglklase. En la testo estis mallonga artikolo pri la Esperantlingvo. Kvankam mi ne havis multan da tempo lastatempe, mi konsciis en tiu momento ke mi volas kaj mi devas relerni pli da la lingvo. Do, mi rekomencas mian grandan vojaĝon de la lingvoj.

BLOGOPHILE
My blog is now approaching working order again. I haven't had much time to work on it at all, so things have been somewhat inactive, but I'm working on fixing the cosmetic problems, the archives, and other remaining problems. Some people have complained that the commenting system no longer works, but I currently have it set such that no comments actually get posted officially until I have approved them. This serves to cut down on the flow of penis-enlargement comment-spam, of which I receive abhorrent quantities.

THE STRAIGHT JEWISH TICKET
The class elections were this Tuesday and Wednesday, and this year's ballot was particularly interesting. Myself and three of my very good friends each ended up running for one of the four available senior class positions. This happened slightly by fortuitous chance. However, each of us was opposed by one other person who, in all cases, was remarkably incompetant. These other people were so incompetant, in fact, that we were all quite scared of losing. Yet the possibility of failure loomed great in our minds because of the "vote-getting" power of our opponents, however unfit they were, was still significant due to their social posture. Nevertheless, as the ballots poured in and the victors were declared, we expelled a sigh of excited relief. Interestingly, everyone on the cabinet other than me is Jewish, and if Hannah gets the humans relations spot (as she undoubtedly will) there will be even more Jews. Thank god Nazism failed, because otherwise I would be having a very miserable time next year. And so here is what Sra. Flores termed, "un grupo muy fuerte":

Senior Class:
President: Adam Anderson
Vice-President: Leeor Schweitzer
Treasurer: Jonathan Kadish
Secretary: Jodi Meyerowitz

CEREBRAL MASOCHISM
So, it occurred to me the other day that I have seven AP tests to take. Two (BC Calc and Physics C) are easy 5s in the bag. Three more shouldn't be bad if I continue to ramp up my studying. And then there are yet two more for which I haven't studied at all. This is all very interesting because the tests are in less than two weeks. As Mr. Zaraza would say, this is when "the feces hit the vertically oscillating blade." I've never been able to figure out what he means by that, but it seems oddly appropriate.

ECONOM--POLITICS!!!
A few days ago, Dr. Marchese taught stabilization policies for fiscal and monetary policy. Textbooks tend to emphasize the use of the demand-side Keynesian approach as being the standard fiscal policy used to deal with recessions. So, after we covered all of that nonsense, he spent a day talking about supply-side economics. Being a Republican, he of course favors supply-side economics, and that can be apparent when he starts screaming the phrase, "eight trillion dollars!!" while pointing at the side of the board with "demand-side" scrawled on it. Now, it just so happens that the majority of the class (including every single person who is vocal) is of a more liberal political persuasion, which automatically leads them to favor a demand-side approach--myself, included. But this is where the problem starts. People are utterly incapable of separating their economic judgement from their political belief, leading to an extraordinary amount of incredibly wasteful argumentation. Even Marchese himself is a victim of this plague, claiming that supply-side economics does not lead to deficit spending, even though it generally makes no stipulation about expenditure levels, merely taxation patterns. So, his sensational accusation that the nearly $8 trillion of US debt is a sole consequence of demand-side economics, is truly a gross overexaggeration. It is mainly a consequence of massive military expenditures in the Reagan and Bush I and II eras, which is not associated with economic policy. True, depending on how you want to distribute the blame, you could argue that it is the result of demand-side economics, because without social programs we wouldn't have the debt, but the line between causation and correlation is really quite nonexistant in this case--it's hardly even a blur. But this is all very frustrating for people that can see through the fog of emotion. The fact is that supply- and demand-side approaches both have the same effect and have different consequences. Of course none of this actually matters in the real world since politicians merely lower taxes and increase spending all of the time anyway: the Republicans cut more taxes and spend, the Democrats cut taxes less and spend a little more--the net result is the same.

And so I would like to postulate that there are very different circumstances under which each policy is useful--in fact, there ideally should be little question about when it is best to use a particular policy. I propose that demand-side fiscal policy is useful when aggregate demand is intersecting the short-run aggregate supply curve in the Keynesian range or lower intermediate range. If the premise of demand-side theory is "to first raise demand and supply will follow," then raising demand in this range will lead to negligible increases in inflation, while increasing GDP immediately. In these more severe recessions, demand-side approaches are appropriate because they act quickly, since the economy does not have to wait for capital stocks to accumulate in order for consumption to be resuscitated. Supply-side theory is therefore useful when the economy is operating in the upper end of the intermediate range of short-run aggregate supply. Demand-side policies may work, but they would cause higher levels of inflation, which could negate increases in GDP. Although supply-side theory is slower acting, it automatically lowers the price level and pushes out an economy's long-run aggregate supply first, while incurring fewer deficits. Finally, when the economy is operating in the classical sector on long-run aggregate supply, it of course makes sense to tax the crap out of everyone and give them nothing back. The government should hoard the money and possibly consider buying me a small island in the South Pacific or an education.

DOMINATION
And there is one more matter to consider: the state speech and debate tournament. We had 15 entries, three state champions (including Jonathan Kadish and Ian Rocker in public debate), and took 2nd place overall, out of 57 teams. Ashland, the team that beat us, had 25 entries, earning a total of 75 points to our 65. 10 more points with 10 more entries. We're losing two seniors that actually produced points at this tournament. I'll leave it at that. You connect next year's dots.

If there ever was a God before she died, the following four statements would be all that the real bible would ever need (until, of course, I learn the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian):

∫E·dA = Q/ε
∫B·dA = 0
∫E·ds = -dΦ/dt
∫B·ds = μi + με(dΦ/dt)

OR

div B = 0
curl E + ∂B/∂t = 0
div D = ρ
curl H - ∂D/∂t = J

That momentous occasion has arrived: E&M is nearly done, as I experience the grand scope of the field in terms of Maxwell's Equations.

The district speech and debate tournament, determining those people that will advance on to the state tournament ended today. Before I tell this story in the manner in which it unfolded, let me preface this entry by saying that this week included a lot of what Ian Rocker would classify as "spanking" and "shafting" between the four competitive schools in the distric tournament. The reader has been warned.

The story begins way back at the beginning of March when the debate team realized yet again that we had four teams competing in public debate, but we could only send three to the tournament. Colin Corbett and I decided to cede our spot to Megan and Leeor, since they had been doing better than us, and since Kim and Kibe, and Ian and Jon had already secured their berths. This was an initial disappointment, but undiscouraged I remembered that there are actually four styles of debate: public, Lincoln-Douglas values, cross-examination, and policy. Everyone from our school had always done public debate since it is the simplest, most straightforward, and accessible style, but I decided to branch out and do LD values so I could go to the district tournament. The main difference between LD and public is that LD is a prepared debate, and a single topic is used for two months at a time. I ended up writing my case in the wee hours of the night a few days before districts, going into the tournament with absolutely no practice since there's no one from Wilson against whom I can easily debate LD.

Then came Wednesday evening, when the debate portion of the district tournament was slated to begin. Public debate was kind of a logjam with a mix of 12 really good and not so good teams. LD on the other hand was populated by seven people: 3 from Lincoln (two of whom had done of the event seriously before--one girl actually made it to semifinals at national qualifiers before getting torn to pieces by Jim Johnson), 2 sacrificial lambs from Madison, and myself and another girl from Wilson who wasn't exactly prepared or serious about the tournament. I had kind of a rough first round, going against Griffin Wiminger from Lincoln (one of the people who knew what he was doing). Pretty much the only reason I lost was because I hadn't adjusted properly to the format and made some terrible errors in my argument flow.

The second debate was against one of Madison's sacrificial lambs, and I dismembered him in the cross-examination and in my constructive speech. He spent his rebuttal talking about how the judge should vote for me because I was better prepared and had smoked him--I felt kind of bad for him.

Following this, I had a bye, which gave me an automatic win thankfully. First and second, going to Lincoln, were clearly decided on record and speaker points by the fourth round, so I debated someone from Lincoln for the third and only remaining berth to the state tournament. In what ended up being possibly the most enjoyable debate ever, I defeated him fairly closely and spoke fabulously.

In public debate, five teams were 3-1 after 4 rounds. Breaking it down to strength of schedule, a team from Lincoln got a somewhat cheap 1st place, leaving Kim and Kibe to debate Meghan and Leeor, and Jon and Ian to debate the nose-picker and his partner from Grant to determine the last two spots to go to state. Because it was 11 PM by the time this was decided, the two last public debates were postponed for the date of the speech portion of the tournament (today). After the battle finally ended this afternoon, Kim and Kibe defeated Meghan and Leeor on a 2-1 decision, and Jon and Ian crushed the Grant team with a 3-0 decision. The debate results were thus:

-Public-
1st - 1st seed Lincoln team
2nd - tie between Ian and Jon (1st seed) and Kim and Kibe (2nd seed)

-Public-
1st - Lincoln girl
2nd - Griffin (Lincoln)
3rd - Me

Ah! But that's not all. There are also the two other types of debate: cross-examination and policy. No one in the district ever does them, but Madison decided to throw 3 teams into CX, and 2 people into policy as sacrificial lambs so that they could merely get their team points for districts and be the default to the state tournament (where they will promptly get absolutely slaughtered--think of the psychotic Westview and Ashland teams who have so many tubs of information that they need several dollies to transport them all). Since no other schools had entries in these events (since no one does them!), Madison got 70 points by default without actually having to compete, where we got 35 points by having to go through a bunch of other teams, and Lincoln got about 40. Thankfully there were still all of the speaking events to be added to this total, but the problem is that Madison was our main competition for speech. Lincoln may have done slightly better than us in debate, but they're absolutely terrible in speaking events, so they weren't a threat. The main problem with the point situation was that speaking events give fewer points that debate, and CX earns even more than the other debate events. 1st in a speech event is 10 points, 1st in debate is 15 points, and 1st in CX is 20 points.

Three days later...
The speech tournament occurred, and we performed astoundingly well. I became the district champion this year in extemp, getting the highest ranking from all of my seven judges. My radio flopped a little, only getting 5th out of 12 for a variety of questionable reasons. Ian once again became the district champion in Oratory. Jon became the district champion in Impromptu, and he took 2nd in humorous interp. Hannah took 1st in ADS and 1st in Dual with Kelly. Beth was a close second for ADS. The list goes on. And on. It was a good day. But not good enough. We closed the point gap between Madison and us to about 20, but it simply wasn't good enough. So we came in 2nd, again, but not for being the worse team. If not for those 70 points, we would have (as Ian would say) spanked Madison by a solid 50 points. But it's not important since we're going to obliterate them at the state tournament. We have 14 entries, compared with last year's 11, giving us a good shot at moving up the ladder from 4th to 3rd or 2nd.