Aug
23
News: The Beloit College Mindset List
August 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
My beloved alma mater (Beloit College), and my beloved advisor (Tom McBride), each year release the Mindset List, a hilarious and insulting rigmarole of what this year’s entering students don’t know about. With such startling revelations as “55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties,” the list reads like an annual scanning of the “Events of 1992″ page on Wikipedia.
I hate this list and it makes me mad, mostly because it doesn’t actually build the understanding it pretends to aim toward. More and more people have no guilt or shame whatsoever in their total lack of knowledge of what came before they were born, and have a borderline-adversarial relationship with the interests of their parents or other adults. We build more lateral connections, with peers and friends and even trusted strangers via blogs or TV, than we do vertical connections, with relatives, educators, and so forth.
The list’s makers insist it is only to give a frame of reference to adults who do not wish to sound irrelevant to the young people in their lives. Yet all the list does is remind everyone how old they are and subtly imply that young people are worse off for their level of knowledge. It makes both sides defensive and both take issue with the items on the list.
The New Yorker asks if the Mindset List is still relevant:
The Beloit list has always been a bit musty, often trading in cultural totems as stale as coffee in a faculty lounge. (See all the lists here.) The reader—young or old, hip or otherwise—can’t help but squirm at lines like: “70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.” But for the class of 2014, for whom “‘digital’ has always been in the cultural DNA,” the list seems particularly outmoded. If nothing else, I suspect that kids now know more, rather than less, about these types of cultural trivia and historical fragments, because as each year passes, the information becomes so much easier to obtain.
I wouldn’t go that far. But I do question the list’s relevance every year. Even if a few people my age at Beloit thought of Paul Newman as “the salad dressing guy” (an item of note on our list), that made me feel deeply embarrassed by their ignorance. The Beloit students I know are also embarrassed that the Mindset List is our college’s only entrance into the national consciousness.
Aug
21
News: Parents holding children out of kindergarten
August 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment
This New York Times story on parents postponing kindergarten for a year is the latest example of insane, one-up-oriented 21st-century parenting technique.
“I have met mom after mom who is intentionally holding her child back a year,” said Jennifer Finke, a mother of two in Englewood, Colo. “They say they don’t want their kids to be the youngest or shortest. Is that right? Is it fair?”
Or this:
Suzanne Collier, for one. Rather than send her 5-year-old son, John, to kindergarten this year, the 36-year-old mother from Brea, Calif., enrolled him in a “transitional” kindergarten “without all the rigor.” He’s an active child, Ms. Collier said, “and not quite ready to focus on a full day of classroom work.” Citing a study from “The Tipping Point” about Canadian hockey players, which found that the strongest players were the oldest, she said, “If he’s older, he’ll have the strongest chance to do the best.”
The article goes on to explain that there’s added pressure to hold children back a year since if they enter at the correct age they’ll be up to 18 months younger than other children in the same class, which can have serious effects on personal development.
I didn’t go to kindergarten and started first grade instead. Because of the genetic lottery, I always was the tallest girl in my class regardless of age, so size didn’t have any effect on me after starting school early — I can’t speak to that part and do not underestimate how children may get picked on or left out because they are smaller.
But in terms of maturity or life experience, simply being older doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Someone just like me who had started kindergarten at age 6 would be 19 at her high-school graduation and 23 if she followed it directly with a bachelor’s degree.
She would enter the world of entry-level work two full years after I did and compete against both those who had gone to work right away and those who had spent a year doing community service or some other kind of transitional experience. By age 25 I’ll have four years of full-time work experience where this theoretical person will have two.
More importantly, Americans fall further and further behind the rest of the industrialized world in every core academic subject, and to suggest that our children aren’t capable of or couldn’t find happiness and fulfillment in starting to read or count at the same time they have for decades is the same old overindulgent American helicopter-parenting crapola.
We want our children to be bigger and stronger than other children but don’t mind that they will start their learning and organized socializing a full year later? That sounds like a formula for creating bullies.
Aug
2
Overheard: Barbarians!
August 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Jonathan Franzen follows the people who covertly enforce Cyprus’s policy against trapping songbirds in a July 26 New Yorker feature. Apparently songbirds are the unofficial national delicacy of Cyprus, which I also did not know is a Communist state. The island is beginning to stand out as a bit backwards-looking in the cerebral and modern world of the E.U., hence the policy, which bans practices like using prepared sticks covered in sticky sap or electronic recordings of birds to lure others.
Looking at the picture of hundreds of tiny birds lined up ready to be eaten is pretty sickening. Listen, Cyprus, couldn’t you find a larger food animal, one you could trap without leaving it stuck to something and beating itself to death trying to escape? It’s really cruel. Everyone knows I have a natural affinity toward tiny island nations but you’re pushing it.
Franzen follows a couple of Cypriots who belong to an organization called CABS — the Committee Against Bird Slaughter. They get into some trouble when two locals assault the CABS members, and Franzen and another outsider run as fast as they can until Franzen has an absurdly lucky break:
Heyd continued to retreat, which seemed to me a good idea. When I saw him look back and go pale and break into a dead run, I panicked too. [...]
I saw Heyd running on up through a large garden, speaking to a middle-aged man, and then, looking frightened, continuing to run. I walked up to the garden’s owner and tried to explain the situation, but he spoke only Greek. Seeming at once concerned and suspicious, he fetched his daughter, who was able to tell me, in English, that I’d blundered into the yard of the district director of Greenpeace. She gave me water and two plates of cookies and told my story to her father, who responded with one angry word. “Barbarians!” the daughter translated.
May
25
Overheard: Too-much-ism
May 25, 2010 | 3 Comments
I find it strange and sad that society moves toward regularizing everyone — rather than valuing and helping people with strange, interesting tendencies or abilities, we cram them into a more standard form. The obvious downside is the collapsing of individuality. Beyond that, though, are the consequences of trying to be or simply seem normal and conventional.
A more extreme example of this is hoarding, which is experiencing a strange media heyday at the intersection of disaster-porn and home makeover shows. Salon recently ran an interview with hoarding expert and Smith professor Randy Frost. He put the problem in a way I’d never thought of:
When most of us look at an object like a bottle cap, we think, “This is useless,” but a hoarder sees the shape and the color and the texture and the form. All these details give it value. Hoarding may not be a deficiency at all — it may be a special gift or a special ability. The problem is being able to control it.
People often wonder aloud what may have happened to some of the great artists in history if their esoteric habits and sometimes destructive personalities were chemically regulated. More than that, who knows how many of our most productive mathematicians and scientists experienced mild forms of autism, how many philosophers experienced enlightenment through bouts of depression, and so forth.
There is no reason for people to suffer when we have ways to ease their pain, and I’m not suggesting otherwise. But I do think we can understand and help in moderation, while not unnecessarily squashing anyone’s “special gifts.”
The one-size-fits-all problem shows up in more benign ways that are arguably as offensive. On a new Style Network show called Tacky House, people nominate their loved ones for a makeover of a room the nominator simply can’t stand because of its poor design.
In the episode I watched, a husband nominated his wife of several years who had designed a room in their home around the Martha’s Vineyard locale where they met and fell in love. She filled the room with arrangements of silk roses, flower-upholstered furniture, and all manner of pastel pinks. “I thought you loved this room,” she mumbled sadly. “How am I supposed to watch football in here?” he said.
Yes, the room was overkill, but there was so much love coming from the wife and so little appreciation coming from the husband that it was uncomfortable to watch. The show’s host corrected the woman’s memory in hindsight (“Martha’s Vineyard is a beach, it’s not full of roses,” he’d say. “But I loved the gardens there,” she’d answer) and wedged a new image into the room.
Apr
14
Overheard: Today’s worst sentence
April 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Yuck:
“You can’t get that at the Second Avenue Deli,” he said, pointing out thick spears of chicken, celery and carrot, and sprigs of dill that were barely contained by the bowl.
I’ve reread this a few times and can’t figure out the list of ingredients. Maybe it’s the awful term “thick spears,” which I could imagine referring to potatoes or something but not celery, not carrots, and certainly not chicken. With the extra comma after carrot, the sentence tells us only the dill was barely contained by the bowl, which sounds like a LOT of dill. Bad show, Julia Moskin.
On the other hand, the article from which I drew the sentence is interesting and worth reading: Can the Jewish Deli Be Reformed?
P.S. Take a moment and reflect on the irony of my earlier post on anti-swearing language elitists combined with this persnickety language dissection. But clear language isn’t an issue of education or elitism — trying to be artificially descriptive or clever muddies the writer’s message.
Apr
14
Overheard: Four-letter words (except s-m-r-t)
April 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s that time again. Time for the same old tired, nonsensical debate over swearing in the public eye . . .
OMG, SWEARING SHOWS NO VOCABULARY! SMART PEOPLE TOTALLY DON’T SWEAR! LANGUAGE IS DUMBER BECAUSE OF SWEARS!
. . . Brought out again by the New York Times in an article I desperately hope has an ironic title: Why Do Educated People Use Bad Words?
This debate is stupid, illogicked to say the least, and full of dweebs. Try to find an issue where there’s more overlap between conservative religious people and well-to-do liberals. At least people who object to swearing because it offends them religiously have some argumentative ground to stand on — they believe that poor language offends the deity or takes the deity’s name in vain. But to suggest that swearing is some shameful cesspool of the idiocracy is short-sighted and elitist.
Yes, I went there: Elitist. It is a word I use sparely because as a college-educated avid reader, student of language, and allaround nerd, I am vulnerable to it myself. But read the comments on the post, especially those with a high number of reader recommendations — they’re absurd. Of particular note are the comments stating explicitly that smart people do not swear. I’m sorry, internet stranger, have you met any of the smartest people I know? Because almost all of them swear regularly and, more importantly, that has nothing to do with anything. Equating intelligence with lack of swearing opens up a giant logical gap.
Don’t mistake my message here: To not swear is fine also. In the last six months or so I made a decision to clean up my language, if only to increase the impact when I do pull out a swear to make a point. There’s no way anyone who drives in the city of Chicago could ever fall out of practice in the art of fine profanity.
Apr
12
News: Rates of infla-seball
April 12, 2010 | 2 Comments
The latest This American Life details the seemingly nefarious dealings of one investment firm before and during the bursting housing bubble and subsequent recession. Most of the way in, the show guts you with a complex capitalist issue that does not bear out an easy answer.
I love moral gray areas as a general rule, which is almost a statement not worth making: Almost all moral issues are gray in our real everyday lives. (I also love air, whiling away the hours, weather, and waking up every morning.) In this case we are asked to decide: If you are in the business of making money for your investors, and you do that by exploiting a legal weakness of the accepted system, is it wrong?
Moreover: If exploiting that weakness breaks the bubble’s back and throws our country into turmoil that will last for years, is it any more or less wrong?
I realized what this episode reminded me of while texting with my dad about the Chicago Cubs. As a White Sox family, we dislike the Cubs; as a north sider dealing with Cubs traffic and the Cubs’ awful, awful fan base, I am not sympathetic. One night last year, drunken Cubs fans crowded around the Clark bus I was riding home, like shambling zombies in a Stephen King-ocalypse. They start drinking at 9 a.m. and finish at the end of the baseball season.
But fan base aside, because I’m not here to get all argumentum ad hominem.
According to Forbes, the Cubs are the fifth-most valuable franchise in Major League Baseball at $726m — about 45% of the formula-busting New York Yankees at $1.6b.
Yet the Cubs have the most expensive average ticket price in baseball, despite last year’s sub-.500 season. The Yankees are only the third-most expensive average even with their $1.6b franchise value.
As the experts on This American Life pointed out about the investment firm, can you fault an organization for making money for its investors? In the case of the Cubs, when people will lay down absurd money to attend the games, buy merchandise, and carouse at the local restaurants and bars, can anyone blame the higher-ups for charging as much as possible?
Baseball is a business like any other, and if the goal is to put butts in the seats, the Cubs are a succes fou regardless of the team they put out in any given season. Foolhardily signing long-term deals with players who self-destruct as soon as the cap is back on the pen is a symptom of really, really poor judgment in the management. It also shows that the Cubs don’t value return-on-investment for fans who pay more than any other fans nationwide do to see their team.
Apr
10
News: Excedrin and the great rebranding hoopla
April 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment
First a disclaimer: I love Excedrin, rely on it frequently to kill my headaches dead, and recommend it to people.
That said, a few months ago I started to notice something. Extra Strength Excedrin was on sale two for one while my favorite Excedrin Migraine wasn’t, and I thought, you know, if they’re close enough I can buy Extra Strength. Let’s compare some of the Excedrin family of products:
I’m sure other pain reliever brands do the same thing, but for Excedrin it’s particularly funny since their model includes three separate ingredients: the acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine in a particular combination.
Apr
5
Overheard: The currency of argument
April 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment
The NYT’s “The Caucus” blog ran a post on Sarah Palin’s discomfort-inspiring endorsement of John McCain in a state primary where he is being brutalized from the right. I hate John McCain for bringing Palin to anyone’s attention in the first place and can never forgive him, but the photo of him standing beside (yet several feet away from) Palin is painful. She is, of course, wearing her scary structured black leather jacket that seems to come from the Dominatrix Lair line of Chanel. He looks as though he has been holding his breath for the last hour, or year and a half.
Anyway, this doesn’t draw out more than the typical level of outrage for me, but one of the reader comments explained my thoughts better than I’ve managed to before now:
Maybe as Republicans keep moving further and further into the past we’ll finally return to a time when the currency of argument was reason rather than emotion and symbolism.
Yesterday on Speaking of Faith, Krista Tippett hosted two Jesuit priests who are celebrated scientists: Brother Guy Consolmagno and Father George Coyne. They discussed extensively the gaps in our understanding of the universe, and how those gaps are something to celebrate, to pursue without ceasing.
They also quoted the Anne Lamott line that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. The certainty of today’s most abusive and relentless right-wingers is their most offensive trait among many.
Jan
25
News: Dumpy Brit hates fashion
January 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment
On Friday my tutee and I went over the word “refuted.” I realized I got into too much detail and nuance when describing the words to him, which I can’t help, but refute was especially tricky.
“So you argue for something?” he said.
“No, not really. You argue against something someone else said, and back up your point,” I said. “So, yeah, you do kinda argue for something, but only because you’re proving something else wrong.”
We used it in a sentence, which I think was about the President and the Senate. Then real life presented me with a much better example. Tanya Gold wrote a regrettably stupid, bitter-sounding piece on why fashion is the worst, including — no, really — blaming high heels for a sixteen year old’s fatal fall between subway cars. In it, she makes a lot of straw-man arguments about thinness and unhappiness and blah blah blah.
One of the first commenters on the post swiftly refutes Gold’s claims. But the best answer came from Tavi of style rookie, who shoots the straw men down with one sentence:
What Tanya Gold and many others, including myself, hate is the everyone-has-to-look-the-same-and-also-sexy philosophy, which is NOT fashion.
Plenty of people have enormous style that isn’t tied to any era, any designer. To imbue your appearance with verve and personality has nothing to do with thinness OR sexiness unless you want it to. And to completely give up on your appearance, as it seems Gold has, isn’t making any statement against fashion. Most everyday people don’t participate in fashion, and even those who follow it don’t necessarily buy or wear any designer fashion at any point. She mentions feeling nauseous or something when she passes the Banana Republic, which is one of the classiest and most classic chains around and which has only occasional ties to trend.
I think Tanya Gold actually hates clothes that fit properly, and where that comes from I can’t say. Listen, friend Tanya. I am 5’11″ and 200 pounds, several standard deviations away from the average, and I diligently rifle through LOTS of wrong things before coming up with a right thing. And yes, on those days when I dress like a bum, I know that’s what I’m doing. In other words, here’s a quarter: Take your frumpadump “I hate fashion, t-shirts and broomstick skirts forever!” and call someone who cares.