Scripps posted the speech that class president, senior class speaker, and future president of the United States Ashley Peters gave at graduation on Sunday. Seriously. She’s the best public speaker I’ve ever seen–all the faculty now know not to go after her, lest they be utterly upstaged.
Archive for May, 2008
American Airlines, like basically all airlines right now, has issues. As a result, they think that, only a few weeks or months since a wave of airlines started charging people for their *second* checked bag (GRAH ANGER GRAH), charging people to check any bags at all is acceptable. So far, this news along with other AA cuts has sent the airline’s stock down 24%. I hope it plummets further, before other airlines think this is actually a good idea and copycat it. Is it at all possible for every passenger on a flight to fit a carryon suitcase into the overhead compartment? No! Except for short-term business travelers and the like, you may as well just add the $15 onto every AA ticket price.
It seems like airlines have been doing their gosh-darned best over the last year or so to make flying as unpleasant an experience as possible. A customer satisfaction survey just released found that we are the most dissatisfied with air travel since 2001. Randomly canceling tons of flights, providing crappy service, and raising fares probably all have something to do with this.
Don’t get me wrong–I am more than willing to put the blame for this predicament on the shoulders of decisionmakers at the top airlines. They’ve made plenty of lousy decisions and customer-hating policies. But there are definitely factors more or less out of the airlines’ control. The TSA being the #1 most hated government agency, for one (though the airlines are capable of lobbying for less idiotic security policies–they apparently just don’t). Oil prices are another. (Do hybrid planes exist? Can we buy some?)
Which got me thinking: what if air travel just isn’t worth being in business anymore? As American Airlines chairman and CEO Gerard Arpey mentioned in the article:
The airline industry as it is constituted today was not built to withstand oil prices at $125 a barrel, and certainly not when record fuel expenses are coupled with a weak U.S. economy.
Most firms that are incapable of turning a profit in the mass market either go away, or become high-end niche businesses. What if that happened to air travel? Flying, after all, is one of the most wasteful-per-capita means of transportation out there–you burn more gas per person than you would roadtripping all that distance. With oil prices as they are, eco-friendliness correlates with profits–or vice-versa. The rich and business travelers who need to get places fast would still have airlines to serve them. But how would the rest of us get around this big-ass country of ours?
There’s the problem. What alternatives does the middle class have to air travel for long-distance mass transit? Amtrak goes almost nowhere, except maybe on the East Coast. While the overall Amtrak experience has been quite enjoyable in my experience, it’s expensive as heck and you run the risk of MAJOR delays if the schedule gets messed up and you have to compete with commodity trains for rail space. Greyhound buses exist, but they’re not only uncomfortable, they’re also gas-dependent and in many cases fares cost the same or more than comparable flights. Chinatown buses are useful and cheap as heck, but they also are pretty much limited to East Coast departures and destinations.
In short: we don’t really have an alternative. As much as we loathe them, we need the airlines to stay afloat. For now. Where’s my goddamn high-speed transcontinental maglev train?
American Public Media just created Budget Hero, a game where you tweak the federal government budget (based on real GAO numbers) in an effort to achieve your goals while avoiding bankruptcy. I don’t expect this to be a fast-paced console game anytime soon. But as a nice Flash-based way of looking at what the heck the government does (and could/should) spend its money on, it’s pretty sweet. If you’re a government student or a political economy hack of some sort, check it out.
At the end, you can compare your budget with those of players of various genders, income levels, and party affiliations. I was amused to see that the self-identified Republicans had the *least* solvent budget of any party group: their average budget would bust in 2048, with government spending at 19.2% of GDP and government debt at 27.0% of GDP. (It’s a great illustration of something I constantly tell fiscal conservatives: if you really care about making government smaller, quit whining about school lunch programs and end the war!) Libertarians did a bit better, busting in 2058, with spending at 18.6% and debt at 20.2%.
But despite desperately trying to spend money on education, infrastructure, and random environmental things, I achieved my health & wellness, anti-government waste, and energy independence goals with a government more solvent (2070+), smaller (18.6% of GDP), and less indebted (8.2% of GDP) than even the goddamn Libertarians.
Sweeeeet.
I’d say this ought to qualify me to be president, except for three of the major components to my success: ending pork barrel projects outright (is that even possible?), cutting some senior benefits (the baby boomers will have my head), and raising taxes for corporations, polluters, and the wealthy in order to actually balance the budget (you’d think that would be sensible enough to be popular… :/ ). So never mind.
I walked out back to the Scripps garden to see if I might transplant my balcony rosemary and basil plants there before I graduate. It’s nice and chaotically leafy back there. And that’s when I discovered that the peach tree in the garden had actual fruit on it! I took a peach down and tried it–mmmmm.
So here’s a PSA: free organic/free-range/vegan/whatever-the-hell peaches behind Browning! Go eat some so they don’t go to waste. :)
One of the Core II’s this year was about food–where it comes from, how it’s made, etc etc. Basically The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a class. (Why didn’t we have such awesome Core IIs in my day??) Some of the students for their final project mapped out all the edibles growing on Scripps’ campus and posted it in the Motley. There’s a surprising number of plants and fruit trees growing here–a bunch I didn’t even know about! I’ll have to get a picture of the posterboard and post it.
In the last three days, I have written an all-nighter-enhanced 12-page paper about sweding, studied for and took a two-part Civil Liberties final, recorded two new acapella songs (“When My Boy Walks Down the Street” by Magnetic Fields and “Sumer Is Icumen In,” an Old English semi-pagan song we learned in choir), held two Free Culture 5C events (a showing of “Freedom of Expression” and a music mixtrade), and performed in my last Chamber Choir concert ever.
Today senior grades were due. My undergraduate education is complete. Holy crap.
Not to say that there ain’t things left to do. My room desperately needs cleaning, I need to pack stuff to ship home, and I continue to search for gainful employment. There’s about a billion todos and personal projects that I put on hold while finishing up my academic work. I expect many raucous, amusing exploits between now and graduation with my fellow seniors, and Nelson once he’s here.
But it’s really over. I’m no longer a college student. I just haven’t realized it yet.
Ho-ly crap.
So, every year the graduating class paints a section of Scripps’ graffiti wall. I submitted the design above for voting. Lots of people liked it, and of the three submissions I thought I’d win.
But then there was a late entry.
It’s a cliff, all pretty and green grass, with the blue sky shining down. At the edge of the cliff is the Scripps symbol/mascot/thing, La Semeuse. She is throwing stick figures (us) off the cliff into the ocean below, where it appears the stick figures are drowning. One stick figure holds on desperately to a tree root sticking out of the cliff, trying not to fall in the water. It was Untitled, but I’d call it “Sink or Swim.”
Even having a horse in the race, I was tempted to vote for it. It was well-drawn and *so* perverse. Well, apparently I’m not the only one here who’s sleepless, stressed, and bitter as hell in the midst of finals and an awful job market. Lots of people voted for it. “Sink or Swim” won.
Maybe people will feel some voters’ remorse later once they’re done with finals, I guess we’ll see. Already a number of the seniors in the kitchen when Elaine told us the results weren’t very happy with the result. But as much as I liked my own design, “Sink or Swim” will look nice on the wall, next to the “Strange Fruit” design from the ’30s with all graduates hanging from the branches of a tree.
Someone a while back said to me that there ain’t much that unites our class other than bitterness and cynicism. I agreed entirely. On those grounds, I think this design is totally appropriate for the Scripps Class of 2008.
I imagine that would work as a title for a majority of my posts…
Anyway, first, a book! Cory Doctorow’s new novel, “Little Brother” (like “Big Brother” from 1984, ha ha), just came out. Like all his other work, Cory’s made it available for free under a Creative Commons license. Though, if you like it, buy a copy for a friend, or for a poor teacher or librarian!
It’s the kind of book I wish I’d had sophomore year of high school. Plenty of characters, including well-meaning ones, espousing the same old passive, scared-as-hell, “the world is different now therefore all rights violations are justified” authoritarian* arguments. It’s a daring portrait of resistance to that worldview and its enforcement. Despite the sci-fi label, virtually all of the tech in the story is current. As is the political climate described…which means it really hits close to home.
I really want to believe the “the answer to all questions is 9/11!!!” meme is waning, what with the dissolution of Giuliani’s campaign. I wish that the country was starting to grow a pair**, defend the Bill of Rights, and weigh the costs and benefits of security policies with the rational awareness that terrorism is a micro-risk among the myriad security problems our country has, like car accidents, identity theft, levees stuffed with newspaper, and basic infrastructure falling down. But I think that’s a bit too optimistic.
So go read.
Second, I just discovered this Minnesota band Cloud Cult thanks to The Current. (Yeah, I know, late to the party.) I’m currently obsessed with the single from their new album, “Everybody Here Is a Cloud.” Here’s the video–shot with random fans in Como Park!
***
* Is there a better term for “anti-civil libertarian”?
** I can’t think of a non-gendered way of putting this idea: “grow some balls”? “man up”? There’s “grow a spine,” but to me that implies standing up for yourself, as opposed to refusing fear in general.
This didn’t actually happen at the party on Friday. But it would’ve been funny.
Remember this motivational poster?
Here’s the male equivalent, just in time for finals:
I’m planning to print both out and have them at the artsy fartsy Motley art show Lisa’s organizing (where senior non-art majors show off their artistic side!) Mwahahaha…
