November 2005 Archives

The national weather service predicts 2-5 inches. I hope that they're right.

Writing nothing is probably better than writing something when one doesn't have anything to say. I'll defer to that judgement for tonight--but only for tonight.

After writing 500 words of this stupid essay for academic all stars (see below), I realized that I could absolutely not stand a single additional word of BS, so I cut straight to the point with this conclusion:

"Answering the question 'Why me?' may well be impossible within the context of a truly persuasive or compelling essay. I cannot relate why I am better than the rest of the applicant pool, none of whom I know, without making gross assumptions and sounding absurdly arrogant—thereby defeating the entire purpose I hope to serve by writing this very essay. So, I have made no attempt to answer this question. Instead, I offer you this brief sketch of a restless spirit who has treated academics and life as an opportunity to immerse himself in knowledge and experiences that are as diverse and intense as possible. Whether that is justification enough for 'why me?' is an exercise left to the reader."

HA! Take that, dunderheads!!

I was filling out my Academic All-Stars application the other day when I came to the essay section and stopped dead in my tracks. Most college and scholarship essay prompts are bad. It's a unfortunate and pretty much unavoidable reality. But the lovely people at Academic All-Stars have gone beyond the idiot, the dolt, the moron this year. Their prompt can only be described by the nonexistent word: "dunderheadedness". The prompt you ask? It is a masterpiece of concision--merely the two words: "Why me?" That's it! "Why me?" Actually, I believe that this cannot qualify as a prompt and therefore cannot warrent a response by me. You see, the purpose of the essay prompt for college or a scholarship is to provide some written context or "prompt" (hence the term) for the applicant to express themselves to the reader the desired manner. This is done so that the reader can answer the question "why him or her?" The applicant is not to answer this question himself or herself. It is not, and should not be the duty of the applicant in an essay to explain why he/she should be chosen. Doing so accurately would require that the applicant argue that he/she is superior the rest of the applicant pool--something about which he/she has no knowledge and which would necessarily conjure up an impression of an arrogant and conceited person, thereby defeating the entire process of the application itself. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, it is entirely impossible to write a truly good essay on the topic of the superiority of one's self. A good essay has some nonobvious, or preferably profound, purpose or revalation that is argued. Aesthetically, there is nothing profound or interesting or even tasteful at all about self-aggrandizement. QED. (<-- How is that for self-aggrandizement, eh?)

It is a widely accepted fact that college textbooks are absurdly overpriced. This semester I mangaged to avoid most the full cost of about $200 for the textbooks for my two classes by checking two of them out from the library and using a $60 gift credit at Powells to buy the third. The average textbook these days runs from $100-$150 and typically contains an absurd amount of useless fluff: unimportant pictures, figures, and blank margins. I was looking at my textbooks for next semester only to learn that Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics and Krugman's International Economics are each about $120. The paradigm of overpriced textbooks is becoming so entrenched that the average prices in the used textbook market are rarely more than 30% less than new, as thrifty students try to minimize their losses. Even so, $80 for a textbook is not much of an improvement.

I was pondering this problem and googling somethings when I came across a brilliant notion. Unlike in America, students in other countries simply do not have the means to pay $100+ for each book they need. So publishers print softcover "international editions" of many of their textbooks in foreign countries to be sold there. The international editions are typically in black and white only and printed on lower quality paper, but that's not particularly important unless the student wants to keep one of their texts as a reference book. The cost is significantly less. I'm not sure what they cost directly from the publisher, but third parties now buy them in bulk and resell them internationally on eBay. For example, Griffith's $115 text is sold for $7 plus $15 shipping and handling. It seems like a scam, but the feedback ratings are overwhelmingly positive. Granted, there is a slight (3-4%) chance that you will get a book with missing pages or chapters, but that's why you only pay $22 instead of $114. It's truly brilliant.

An emanent professor of philosophy at Princeton recently published a short book/long essay entitled "On Bullshit". I read the first few pages of it in a bookstore recently and it's extremely interesting. I'll be able to finish reading it when I get in on hold from the library in a few days. Here's an intriguing interview with the author:

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/video/frankfurt/

His description of the "bullshitter" actually reminds me a lot of Leeor. Nevertheless, he has an incisive and compelling argument.

Whenever I read fiction, I typically do it in spurts according to author. This summer, for example, I read the major works of Dostoevsky (minus Demons). I just finished reading The Stranger by Camus, and I think that he may be the target of my next binge-reading episode. The content-length ratio of this book is honestly the greatest of everything I've read. It is an amazing book, whose meaning I think I am just barely beginning to grasp. It's something about morals, moral standards, and sun symbolism. Tomorrow, I'm going to propose to my English teacher that we read it in class. I've had enough of the garbage we've recently read. Like Water for Chocolate is a terrible, terrible book that would be more productive used as heating fuel in Northern Pakistan than read by anyone on earth.

When one thinks of a blog written by an adolescent, hyperemotional, mood-swinging, suicide-contemplating rants typically come to mind. If you have read much more than a sentence of this blog, you probably know that I'm not a very, shall we say, emotional person. Now, however, the suicide-contemplation has come to at least a modest fruition. I just applied to the University of California Berkeley, and it was highly stressful--reminiscent of when I applied to the last three institutions. An interesting thought occurred to me though. When one sends off one's applications to the Office of Rejections at whatever college, one has really signed away one's entire fate and $60-$70. These people have my money (or rather my parents' money) and major control over the outcome of the next four years of my life, which inevitably will predict my fate for much of the rest of my life. If there ever existed such a thing as free will (which I, by the way, fiercely maintain that there is not), then it is simply hijacked in the college rejection process along with enough money for Jonathan and I to buy six dinners at the Chaat House. SIX DINNERS. Think of all the paneer, curry, and mango lassies... Anyway, enough of that nonsense. It's time for me to be productive again.

I'm finally learning to drive in a serious fashion. After realizing that I can only take Advanced Electricity and Magnetism at Lewis and Clark next semester if I can drive myself, I was completely motivated beyond my previous piddling efforts. So, I convinced my mom to go driving with me today and I drove to Lewis and Clark, then downtown, then to Burlingame, Hillsdale, and back home. Aside from a few of her violent explosions when I failed to properly signal when turning on empty streets, it went rather well. I basically have two months in which to learn how to drive well enough to pass the driving test. It's going to be fun.

I think I seriously just had a mild nervous breakdown during the past two hours. It only figures that it was instigated by a physics problem...

Jonathan and I just returned from our first debate tournament of the year at Sprague. It went well; we are on our way to continuing the Rocker-Kadish legacy. This is especially true when considering that Wilson historically does absolutely abysmally at Sprague. We pretty much annihilate everyone in the second half of the year, but at Sprague I don't remember anyone ever doing better than 2-2. True, we didn't win the tournament, but we came in 2nd by going 3-1. We just lost to the winning team by the skin of our teeth in a debate that we technically should have won. Now I know I'm sounding arrogant, but you weren't there so you can't judge it. Ok that was arrogant, but really, that's all debate is about. That's the only reason those people from Westview carry around so many damn file-bins of information.

But let me elaborate. Now of course you're groaning, but you willingly decided to read this. We were pretty much completely screwed on the resolutions. Here were the resolutions, the sides we debated, and the outcome:

1. FEMA should be separated from the Department of Homeland Security. (opposition, win)
2. Homeland security should take precendence over individual rights. (proposition, loss)
3. The US should limit entry visas for people from certain states or regions. (opposition, win)
4. Public transit systems should provide the same passenger/luggage screening as airports. (proposition, win)

So overall, we got the short end of the stick on topics, especially on the last one which we only won through a combination of my brilliant definitions and Jon's incisive rebuttal. But let's talk about this loss that we had. "Homeland security should take precendence over individual rights."? Isn't that the status quo? It sort of is, unless you want to take away more of people's rights, in which case you're setting yourself up for debate suicide: the moral low-ground and no reasonable justification. So we argued terribly for the status quo, but our opponents NEVER brough this up and were equally vague (somehow they were the ones who won the tournament). It's illegal for the proposition to argue the status quo in debate, but only if the opposition mentions it. So technically, the judge could not vote against us for arguing the status quo because our opponents didn't catch it. But that's pretty much why we lost, according to the judge's ballot. Another interesting feature of that debate was when the opposition compared Jews with terrorists and we started laughing (Jon is sort of Jewish, after all). At this point she muttered, "Fuck you" at us and continued on in a style of speech vaguely reminscent of beatnick poetry: "But who is to say who? Or how? These people? Who? Terrorists? Jews? Everyone? When? But WHY?" It was pretty spectacular, except that we lost. You try arguing that we should take rights away from people to preserve homeland security without arguing the status quo.

So all and all it was fun, although a little weird that Jonathan and I were the only two people from Wilson there, other than some freshmen who showed up to watch. Fifteen hours with Jonathan Kadish is something you don't experience every day... unless of course you're me, in which case you do that a lot.

Somewhat by accident, I have been launched into an expedition to learn about globalization. I realized a week or two ago that globalization is central to many of the arguments that come up in debate and extemp, so, having a cursory knowledge of the basic economic arguments in its favor, I checked out Joseph Stiglitz book Globalization and Its Discontents. While being an excellent read, it is more of a memoir on his experience working at the World Bank, and is consequently conspicuously devoid of references. Nevertheless, his argument is compelling.

There are plenty of abstract reasons why globalization and trade liberalization should lead to improved economic performance for all countries. I don't need to repeat them. They're the stuff of economics 101, so you probably already know them. And they are valid, at least in the absence of market imperfections. Yet looking at the world, globalization has created about as many failures as successes. The optimist exuberantly points the rapid rise in economic output and standards of living in East Asia. Last time I checked, China's economy was growing at around 9%. True, China has a heck of a lot more problems that a single growth rate reveals, but it has been at least partially successful recently due to the gradual loosening of trade barriers. Singapore is another good example of globalization's benefits.

For each of these successes, the pessimist can wave his arm at most of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. American and IMF liberalization policies have conspicuously failed, leading to events like those of yesterday and today at the Summit of the Americas. Violent protests erupted and Venezuela's left-wing Hugo Chávez attempted to market his "Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas" as a counterplan to Bush's Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Economist notes that Mr. Chávez's "alternative" is not much more than an offer for cheap oil and a declaration against poverty--no better than the US-IMF liberalization plans.

The question then comes to mind: why should there be such a distinct discrepancy between countries that have flourished and failed? The answer seems to lie in the means by which market and trade liberalization is executed. East Asian economies, especially that of China have come to power because of a very slow and deliberate reform process that is still occurring today. IMF policy calls for having client countries dismantle government controls as quickly as possible. Since many of these countries are desperate for money, they are forced to acquiesce to IMF demands. The IMF argument goes something like this: if the government controls are eliminated, money will naturally flow to the industries in which the country operates most efficiently and at a comparative advantage. But the fact that the US and EU maintain extensive subsidies and tariffs for their industries that do not have a comparative advantage means that developing countries are often priced out in the global marketplace. Agricultural subsidies are a classic example. In Senegal, one of the major industries is the harvesting of peanuts. US agricultural subsidies have created a global glut of peanuts that has depressed prices and undercut Senegal's peanut industry. Most of these developing countries don't really have a hope of being efficient in more than one or two industries--usually cash crops. Colonialism caused their economies to generally focus on one or two key products. The solution to globalization's dillemma seems to be to give time for free marketeering to arise naturally as opposed to the shock therapy that has routinely failed throughout the globe, and that the IMF and US (to a lesser extent) tend to support.

Stiglitz's book contains an extensive indictment of the mismangement in the IMF in particular, which I won't repeat. Generally speaking, the IMF models and prescriptions for the American economy are bad enough that US policy-makers pay little or no attention to them. Unfortunately, other countries don't always have the ability to shun the IMF like we do.

I did it. I just applied to college. Three colleges to be specific. And now round two begins...