The mystery of what Will Baude looks like (not a mystery to me, having gone to school with him for a few years, but nevertheless a point of interest to some) has been solved, sort of. The Baude bio includes a confusing picture of part of the face of someone I'm assuming is, in fact, Will, as well as--and this is why I'm linking to it--a reprint of exerpts of my blogversation with him and, eventually, Jacob Levy of Volokh, about "Hyde Park amenities." This particular conversation over blogs was what sprung me, headfirst (or, really, keyboard-first, if that makes sense, which it doesn't) into the blogosphere. So any social skills I've lost or computer skills I've gained (oh, how the two go hand in hand) have that discussion to thank.
Monday, October 04, 2004
For those who haven't already seen this: My discussion with Will Baude and Jacob Levy about desolate, GAP-less Hyde Park.
Jane Brody interviews the unfortunately named "Dr. Rolls, an expert on satiety and satiation."
Brody's latest bit of profundity: "Calories consumed must be used or they will be stored as body fat."
What do bloggers look like?
The Slithery D has surmised, for reasons I don't entirely understand, that Will Baude looks like an actor from American Pie. Now I wish I'd never had a picture up of myself, so I could find out which celebrity my readers imagine that I'd look like. How far off would it have been? Gwyneth Paltrow? Roseanne? I'll never know.
Who knew?
It seems the University of Chicago not only has sororities, but has students who will publicly admit to having heard of the Olson twins.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
How to make "The Facebook" more conducive to neurosis:
There is already a category for those looking not just for "dating," "random play," or a "relationship" on the Facebook--it's called "Whatever I can get." Putting that you're looking for "Whatever I can get" suggests that you are either desperate, horny, or, at least in theory, open-minded. But what would be awesome is if there were a category called "Whatever I can't get," for the Groucho Marxists among us. Somehow I think more people would, if they were honest, put that they wanted whatever they couldn't get than whatever they could.
U of C "fashion": Not so unconventional after all
Trying, unsuccessfully, to help my friend track down a pair of flip-flops (and no, the man I intend to vote for for president doesn't count) this afternoon, we found ourselves in, like, a mall, on Michigan Avenue; more specifically, we found ourselves in the duchy of J. Crew. Why a duchy? Why not?
In any case, the latest look in that bastion of preppy paraphernalia is nothing other than the elbow-patch blazer, a look I'd never noticed before coming to Chicago, and one I've found fascinating since getting here. Like the housecest pseudomarriage (you U of Cers know what I'm talking about), the elbow-patch blazer is one of those things that just can't be explained to people from other institutions. But now, the E.P.B. has made it to the mainstream. A young man rolling his own cigarette in front of Wieboldt sheds a single tear.
If the elbow-patch blazer is the new frayed white lacrosse-team baseball hat, what gets to be the new elbow-patch blazer? My money's on the trench coat, in that I already have one, as does at least one other French lit major, and with French majors picking the U of C trends, those trends might for once lean more towards fashion than anti-fashion.
On a related note, a strange conversation at Jimmy's/Woodlawn Tap culminated in a group of people concluding that what Hyde Park really needs is a Chanel. Not a GAP, not an Old Navy, not a tepid step towards gentrification, but something all-out classy and blatantly unaffordable to both the Hyde Park community and the students/staff/faculty of the University. What wouldn't a store window filled with those interlocking "C's" do for 53rd Street...
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Friday, October 01, 2004
The hidden benefits of the French press
I just discovered that my mini Bodum French press, which I'd accidentally left in my dorm's communal kitchen when I left Chicago last spring, is still down there. Now it's back up in my room--I'm just a water-heater and can of Illy away from bliss.
Aside from it being tastier and cheaper to make my own coffee than to purchase it outside, there's another advantage: privacy. How, you might ask, does buying coffee constitute an invasion of privacy?
Upon returning to Chicago, I realized that my caffeine addiction remained, but I had not yet gone looking for my abandoned French press. So, in the course of under a week, I've been to each of the 5-odd Hyde Park coffee places at which I am a regular. At one of them, I was asked if I wanted "your mocha"--how many Classics Cafe mochas has it been? Over three years' worth, that's how many. At another cafe I was asked about, among other things, my new hairstyle, the boy I'd been there with many times before, how's he doing now (well, as it so happens), and whether I'd lost weight. (As I remarked to my friend Kate, who was there but did not hear me being grilled: if I had lost weight, it was from not going to that cafe--which makes a fabulous cinnamon bun--as much as I used to.)
At the coffee shop where I got what must have been hundreds of cappuccinos during high school--the former Downtown Delicious on Greenwich in TriBeCa--my varying hairstyle was also noted, and the proprietress there also took an interest in which boys I'd been there with, making a point of telling me, unprompted, whether they'd been by recently and with whom.
I don't really think people who work in coffeeshops are invading my privacy--aside from haircuts, hairdye, and male coffee-drinking companions, I don't think I provide much in the way of entertainment--but instead that I am overly self-conscious about my coffee-related habits, and am irrationally embarrassed when they are pointed out to me.
Pretentious professor discovers that today's youth, among other things, use "like" too much.
Kids today, they're not like they used to be.
A clichéd and silly argument, but one that evidently carries a lot of weight if made by an esteemed professor of something-or-other:
"Mark Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. A prizewinning scholar, he has published a number of works of literary and cultural criticism, including Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida, and Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. He has also written for such publications as the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor."
Good to know. Now that we've gotten that important bit of information out of the way, let's get to Professor Edmundson's great epiphany: Today's college student is a lazy, anti-intellectual bore who we may pretend to pity but must actually despise. He spends too much time in front of the TV, playing video games, or on the Internet. (Odd that Edmundson classifies the Internet as yet another purveyor of passivity-inducing material; his article, "Poets and Writers" informs us, is "Online Only." The many impressive publications Edmundson is affiliated with, according to his bio, have websites--is he accusing Harper's of being no better than Lifetime? Oh, nevermind.) Young people today, Edmundson argues, have too much stuff, and too great a sense of entitlement, to be thoughtful, hard-working college students. Oh, and, in case no one's noticed this, they say "like" an awful lot.
Edmundson bases his claim on the fact that his students write, on course evaluations, that they found his class "interesting" and "enjoyable." This must mean, the professor contends, that these students have learned to expect life to be one big TV show for which they are the audience.
Didn't it occur to Edmundson that these students might, like him, find the evaluation forms dippy and superficial and that, wanting to avoid lingering on such a trivial task, yet not wanting to harm their teacher, they wrote generically positive comments on the forms placed before them? It's the simple rule of "ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer"--few course evaluation forms solicit anything beyond "good teacher--should be given tenure" or "bad teacher--had affairs with 5 girls and 6 boys in the class, and failed the remaining 2 students."
Edmundson admits that the forms are part of the problem, but puts most of the blame on the idiotic students in his class, or, on a more general level, on consumerist society, blah blah blah:
"There was an undercurrent to the whole process I didn’t like. I was disturbed by the evaluation forms themselves with their number ratings (“What is your ranking of the instructor?—1, 2, 3, 4 or 5") which called to mind the sheets they circulate after a TV pilot plays to the test audience in Burbank. Nor did I like the image of myself that emerged—a figure of learned but humorous detachment, laid-back, easygoing, cool. But most of all, I was disturbed by the attitude of calm consumer expertise that pervaded the responses. I was put off by the serenely implicit belief that the function of Freud—or, as I’d seen it expressed on other forms, in other classes, the function of Shakespeare, of Wordsworth or of Blake—was diversion and entertainment. “Edmundson has done a fantastic job,” said one reviewer, “of presenting this difficult, important and controversial material in an enjoyable and approachable way.” Enjoyable: I enjoyed the teacher. I enjoyed the reading. Enjoyed the course. It was pleasurable, diverting, part of the culture of readily accessible, manufactured bliss: the culture of Total Entertainment All the Time."
Sorry, what? These students were asked, presumably at the end of the term, when students are exhausted and have more important things on their minds, like final exams, or scrambling to find a job after graduation, to fill out a sheet of paper that asks for sound bytes. Any reasonably intelligent student can offer a couple of them up. What exactly does he expect on these forms, a thesis statement and three supporting paragraphs on a subject of their choosing? Esoteric comments, preferably in a dead language, that note how he, the professor, is not merely entertaining, but ought to be made a divinity within the religion practiced by the speakers of that dead language?
Sadly, the well-intentioned Allan Bloom paved the way for such garbage with his far-more-reasonable Closing of the American Mind. Now there's a built-in audience every time an academic with enough high-quality affiliations decides to complain about consumerist society and the dumbing down of the American university education.
Glass half full of Chardonnay
My friend Kate pointed out that, while Kerry's water glass looked almost like a wine glass, with a stem, Bush's glass was short and cylindrical. Was this a subtle reminder that Kerry is supposed to be too "French" to be the U.S. president?
Neocons for Kerry
Over at Oxblog, David Adesnik has reported, in real time, from the debates. He writes, "Bush is trying to explain why the occupation of Iraq is part of the war on terror. He keeps saying 'freedom' and 'democracy'. But he already has the neo-con vote."
Is there a "neocon vote"? If you'd asked me where I stood on foreign policy many months ago, I would have said, with the neocons. But "neocon," as I believe Adesnik is using it here, is an embrace of a certain type of foreign policy decisions--specifically those of the Bush administration, and there's not really a neocon vote in the same way that there's a Southern vote or a Latino vote. I thought Bush had the right idea when he first went into Iraq, based on what could, I suppose, be considered "neocon" principles--that the war would bring about "freedom" and "democracy." I never agreed with the neocons' affinity for social conservatism, but I did think they knew what they were doing by going into Iraq, even if their presentation of the reasons they were going in left something to be desired. Read this Dissent article by Paul Berman. You didn't have to be a "con" to be with the neocons on this one.
But it's a mess in Iraq. Even if you agreed with the neocons that promoting democracy abroad would sometimes require force, you could be convinced by Kerry when he speaks of how Bush didn't know how to get out of Iraq, how to win the peace, before entering.
Not to criticize the far more knowledgeable folks over at Oxblog, but I'm thinking that Kerry might just get some of the "neocon vote" after all.
Kerry stands firm
"I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life."--John Kerry, in a (successful) attempt to get the "maturity of a twelve-year-old-boy" vote.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
The original WWPD? lives on
That is, I'm still writing my column this year in the Maroon. If/when the paper's online edition gets updated, I'll make a note of it here.
Kristol should be the new Brooks
The NYT's conservative columnist, David Brooks, is engaging and pleasant enough to be palatable even to liberal readers. His recent op-eds include a discussion of the "cult of death" that is behind terrorism (only a slightly stronger stance than that of mainstream or moderate American liberals, who might not say "cult of death," but who are still committed to fighting terrorism) and a cutesy division of red-state and blue-state people into spreadsheet people and paragraph people, respectively. Having a palatably conservative columnist strikes me as a waste of space. Wouldn't it be better if the paper's conservative voice were a bit more confidently conservative and better reflected the sorts of op-eds people who don't rely on the Times are getting their views from? Not a polemical, abrasive conservative, but one who will not sugar-coat his conservatism to make it less revolting to the Times's readers. Someone like, say, William Kristol, who today made a brief, albeit confidently conservative, appearance on the op-ed pages.
I enjoyed Bobos in Paradise, and do not wish to imply that Brooks is incapable of writing good op-eds (his piece defending gay marriage, to name one, was absolutely brilliant). It's just that even--especially--if the paper wants to maintain its liberal slant, it would do well to show its readers current conservative thought as it is presented to actual conservatives.
No pigment for Paris
Paris Hilton is, after all, anti-pigment, and you heard it here first. Now, according to Gawker, Ms. Hilton used the N-word unironically during her latest digitally recorded sexcapades. Which leaves one wondering what Paris thinks of her best friend Nicole Ritchie, who claims to be black but has given herself the Paris Hilton treatment and now looks not just white but sort of like a parody of a rich white girl. One is also left wondering whether an "ironic" use of the N-word would have been much better, and whether Paris Hilton herself is such an ironic concept that anything she says, by definition, can't be taken literally.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Gained in translation
My mother and I are both currently taking introductory language classes--she in German and I in Hebrew. It's amazing what you can learn about a culture (or, more accurately, how language-book-writers perceive a culture) by seeing what words and phrases are considered necessary for the beginner. My mother's German book tells you how to say "The man kicks the dog," while the mini-dictionary in the back of my sefer (that's book, right?) offers translations for "hummus," "yogurt," "Nazi," and "Jewish mother."
My own Jewish mother has correctly pointed out that, between the two of us, we'll soon know Yiddish. I'd like to add that we will not only know Yiddish, but we'll know how to say, in Yiddish, that the man kicked the dog for running away with his hummus. Probably not a common problem in most shtetls...
Socialite info here
Many bloggers let their readers know of funny things they learned, via sitemeter or similar, about who's been looking at their site and which search words brought them to it. Well, until now, nothing that far-out could be found on my sitemeter, other than that I probably spend a bit too much time reading my own blog. Yet today, all this has changed: Someone at the NYT apparently spent 0 seconds on the site, which they'd arrived at by googling the name of socialite Muffy Potter Aston. Ms. (presumably Mrs.) Aston has what has to be the most socialitey name of all the socialites. I do hope the Times succeeds in finding the M.P.A. information it seeks, and feel terrible if my blog was of no use.
Claustrophobia trumps physicsphobia
You learn something new about yourself every day. Today I learned that I am claustrophobic.
My greatest fear, when it came to my physical science requirement, was that calculations would prove too confusing, that velocities and masses would all form a fuzzy cloud in by head. But today's lab, which required climbing the tower of Rockefeller Chapel and, with the help of a protractor, estimating the distance to the Sears Tower, made the more mathematical aspects of the class seem, well, trivial. By the time my lab partner and I had reached what felt like the 100th set of dark, narrow, spiral staircases, I was in a cold sweat, nearly shaking, my heart racing--what was remarkable was that none of this had anything to do with physics-phobia. When we finally arrived at the top of the Chapel's tower, we got to appreciate the view for a moment, then do the necessary, lab-related calculations. It's amazing how, in what feels (irrationally, of course) like a life-or-death situation, messing around with 2-pi-r, 360 degrees, and assorted variables starts to look ridiculously easy.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Debate and cheerleading, together at last
I've remarked many times to Will (Murray, of the rarely-updated More Dancing Angels) that debate teams ought to have cheerleaders, and that, should the Amherst team ever play Chicago (or whatever they call it--"play" can't be right) I would happily seek out some pom poms and do what must be done. So it was to my delight that Wonkette has noted the obvious association between debate and cheerleading.
Number six in Wonkette's presidential debate drinking game: "A Republican operative cites Kerry's prep school debate team experience: Try on a cheerleader outfit."
The NYT gets it right
The NYT comes out in favor of making it easier for college students to vote. As Will Murray noted in his comments on my post about the college prof who made voting a course requirement, what stops people from voting is that it's a pain in the neck, so a rule that makes not voting more of a pain than voting has to be good. Along the same lines, anything that makes voting less of a pain to begin with has to be a step in the right direction. So while I may not agree with the Times when it makes a point of informing its readership that, yes, 13-year-olds can safely get nose jobs, the paper's not all bad.
Endangered classes
U of C francophile-types, listen up: A very cool class, France and the Dreyfus Affair, only has two people in it. If no one else registers for it, it may not take place. So please, if you know French, and are looking to add a fourth class or switch out of something you expected to be good, but wasn't, please, please go to cmore.uchicago.edu and sign yourself up. I mean, we're gonna read Proust! And if you're a francophile-type, that's something you should get around to doing one of these days anyway.
Ironic decorations, cool location, but no hipsters here
What is it with bars and Ms. Pac-man? The Village Voice profiles a new bar in Brooklyn that they assure the reader is not too hipster-oriented, and provides a picture of a man playing on (with?) the bar's very own Ms. Pac-man. But if the bar profiled by the Voice is anything like this place in the East Village, then it might be just a bit hipster after all. I mean, are we expected to believe that a person whose job it is to review bars in the coolest neighborhoods in NYC, for the Village Voice, no less, can really tell hipster from non-hipster? Wouldn't such a person never even encounter anything less than hip?
Monday, September 27, 2004
Today's youth: The Nasal Generation
The folks back east (yes, I am now in the Midwest), over at the NYT, are asking the question we all want answered in an article entitled "How Young Is Too Young to Have a Nose Job and Breast Implants?" At 21, I'm apparently well past the age people are when they decide to get their noses cracked open and fidgeted with by plastic surgeons. I also managed to go through high school without snorting Xanax, which, according to NY Magazine, has replaced being a prep school gangster among today's youth, at least on some especially relevant stretches of the Upper West Side.
What have I learned in reading about the current crop of teens? What it comes down to, for these young'uns, is that it's all about the nose, either making it smaller and more upturned or putting crushed prescription drugs up it. Some people just have too much time on their hands.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
(Rhetorical) questions and (illogical) answers
Is it possible to take multiple classes that meet at the same time? (Answer: sure.)
Should I be ashamed or relieved that, when a sheet of paper was passed around at my house's "mandatory" first meeting, asking people to write down which intramural sports they'd be interested in playing, nearly everyone handed the sheet over to the person next to them without a second thought? (Answer: relieved.)
If, every Tuesday, I take an intro Hebrew language class, a course on the history of fascism, and another on the Dreyfus Affair, all while reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," will that unique type of Rothian paranoia become mine as well? (Answer: most likely, but the fascism class appears to be full, so not to worry, or at least not to worry in Rothian proportions. Hope some spaces open up, though, since it does sound interesting...).
How much diet Coke will fit in my mini-fridge? Relatedly (in that I have no spatial sense whatsoever), will I survive physical science? Also relatedly (in that I will want something a bit more substantial to wash down with said diet Coke, and the dining hall has not proven itself to be any better this year than last), is it worthwhile to go all the way downtown just to buy groceries? Does combining a trip to Fox & Obel with a stop by H&M make the trip more or less productive? (Answers: maybe 20 cans; probably; definitely; less.)
Triumphant return
As some of my more astute readers may have noticed, I am back in Chicago. The pictures below were taken from the right side window of the cab I took back from Midway Airport.
First day back: Midway Airport to the University of Chicago via 55th St.
Promontary Point, Hyde Park, Chicago, looking north 
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