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November 17, 2005

blow this

I've lived here for my whole life, but there are certain things that you just can't get used to. Yesterday was one of the windiest days I've ever experienced. I first noticed it when I got to work.

I must digress momentarily for a small explanation. Since I am working at a high school and going to Northwestern for clients and seminars, I have two schools. Therefore, I refer to the student teaching school as "work" and Northwestern as "school."

So, after I parked at work yesterday, I started the three-block walk to the building. The wind was in my face for the entire walk. Note: during that time, I was walking southeast, then directly east, and the wind hit me in the face the whole time. About 4 hours later, I was leaving work to go back to my car, and the wind was in my face. At this point, I was walking west, then northwest. I got in my car and drove to school. That drive took about ten minutes. After I parked, I walked to the building, which is directly south of the parking lot. And guess what? The wind was right in my damn face the whole way. A few hours later, I left the building to go to the gym, which is directly north of the building I was in. Getting the idea? The wind was in my face for that walk, too. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't make sense. Wind is supposed to come from one, maybe two directions. If it's swirling, you gotta figure that it'd be behind me at least once over the course of the day.

Oh, by the way, the wind was blowing at about 30-40 miles an hour. And the wind chill was something like 15-20 degrees. That just hurts.

Posted by ben at 7:04 PM | Comments (3)


November 16, 2005

24, going on 16

On the radio this morning, I heard that the city is closing the oldest mission and homeless shelter in the city. The area around it, which is somewhere on the near south side, has gentrified dramatically over the past 10-15 years, and the new inhabitants weren't to thrilled with having a homeless shelter in their neighborhood. The space it has used for the past century will be taken by the neighboring high school, allowing it to expand significantly. I started wondering about the fact that a homeless shelter is being moved to allow a school to expand. I'm all for improving school facilities. But which is more important -- improving schools or feeding the homeless? If the homeless aren't tended in any way, isn't this just the poor getting poorer and those at the school getting richer, so to speak? Without question, both the shelter and the school would be filled with people on the poorer end of the nation-wide spectrum, but within that, aren't the more fortunate becoming more fortunate while the less fortunate get it stuck to them once more?

So, then, in an absurdly tangential turn, I started thinking about what it means to be wise. Do wise people come up with better solutions or ask better questions? Socrates was certainly a great thinker, but he was definitely known as a great questioner. Maybe Smart people help others solve complex, difficult problems and make involved plans; and maybe Wise people make others think more. What I eventually came up with is that 8 AM is too early in the morning to possibly think about such things.

Anyways, the homeless shelter is moving to a new and better facility that is relatively close to the old, historic one. So it's really not even an issue for this shelter. Everybody gets better facilities and more space. In other words, all those questions I was thinking about are entirely irrelevant to the topic by which they were brought to my attention.

Before one of my classes at work (work=student teaching), I ran to the faculty bathroom. While I was standing at the urinal, you know, doing my business, another teacher I'd never seen walked in and up to the position next to me. He looked at me and said, "This bathroom is for faculty and staff only." I looked at him and said, "Yup." Then I washed my hands and left. I wish he would've asked for my ID. That's how they get people in trouble at this school -- they take their IDs and write down their info to submit to the appropriate disciplinarian. I really wish he'd asked for it. I could've shown him my driver's license, which shows that I am 24. Or I could've shown him my Northwestern ID, which, though it doesn't show that I am a grad student, certainly proves that I graduated high school. Almost seven years ago actually. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Random Teacher Guy. Ah, the perils of the young teacher. Still, I like to think I don't look entirely like a high school student.

Posted by ben at 8:11 PM | Comments (0)


November 15, 2005

reader beware

I love fish. Have you ever noticed that most oratory or discussion starts with a gross over-generalization and is immediately followed with a series of clarifying remarks? "The Cubs are terrible." Followed by: Well, their starting pitching's great. And there are certainly some solid cornerstones on the roster to build around. Or "George Bush is a fascist!" Followed by: Well, he doesn't really embrace overtly discriminatory policies. And I suppose he doesn't profess hatred for other people. What about: "I'm starving. I'll eat anything." However: I don't really feel like eating Chinese though.

So I'll say it again. I love fish. Just not fishy fish. Or fish that actually tastes like fish. Like salmon. Salmon, I feel, is gross. As are the so-called "steak-like" fish. So, what I really mean is that Christina makes this totally amazing fish with some sort of cheesy stuff on it. And it's amazing. I'd imagine that if heaven were edible, it would taste like this fish. What does all this have to do with anything? Well, it doesn't. My goal is to make everyone feel dumber for having read this. Is it working?

When I was really young, I used to watch Sportscenter every morning before school. Well, maybe I'd watch 10 minutes of it. But it was always the last 10 minutes. And the last thing they do on Sportscenter is the "Did You Know?" segment. I loved it. Nothing fills your brain with useless, trivial information like the "Did You Know?" segment. So, to stick with my previously-mentioned purpose, I would like to share such a random tidbit. A piece of trivia, if you will. This may be useful to those of you who consider Trivial Pursuit to be a sport.

Did You Know: When using quotation marks at the end of a sentence, the period, comma, question mark, or whatever else always goes before the end quotation mark. The reason for this is quite simple. In the days of typewriters, the quotation mark was not a substantial enough mark around which to build a strong hammer. The hammer is the piece that makes the mark. So, in order to make the hammer strong enough, the period and quotation mark were placed on the same hammer. On that hammer, the period came first.

Don't you wish we had better reasons for rules like these?

And now, I must respond to unfounded accusations that I am closet White Sox fan. To be blunt, I am not. Am I a Sox fan? Yes. I have been for a long time. When they play the Cubs, who do I root for? The Cubbies. Always. Being a Cubs fan and being a Sox fan are not mutually exclusive sorts of things. Picking a side is certainly important, but there's no reason to harbor ill will towards one unless they're in a head-to-head situation. In the past, rooting for the Sox has been just as painful as rooting for the Cubs. Not this year though. The Sox played my favorite kind of baseball -- that which is focused on defense, pitching, and winning as a team. That's why I rooted for them all year. Except those six games when they played the Cubs.

Posted by ben at 12:47 PM | Comments (1)


November 10, 2005

just me and my radio

I spent quite a bit of time in the car today, which means that I spent quite a bit of time listening to the radio. NPR to be more precise. Since I was more awake than usual today, a few of the stories got me thinking.

The first was about this much-discussed Asian Bird Flu, or whatever it's called. I was thinking about how much it's going to cost to prepare for it while also trying to prevent it. I checked the numbers, and according to Our President, the price tag is somewhere in the range of $7.1 billion. I'll call that $7 billion, though they've underestimated the costs of pretty much everything else worth estimating. So, to sort of digest that a little bit, the proposal suggests that we borrow $7 billion to pay for preparations and prevention of a disease that hasn't yet proved itself to be a major threat to humans. Suffice to say that it's a potential threat. That's $7 billion more of debt for a potential threat. This digestion, so to speak, led me to this question: how much does Our government spend on current, real health threats. Well, here are some of the numbers:

This year, the government has spent $1.4 billion on "humanitarian" aid for Africa. That's for the whole continent of Africa.
This year, the government has spent $2.7 billion to combat the domestic AIDS pandemic (which, I may add, is very much real and not at all potential).
During the 2004 campaign, Bush proposed spending $2.8 billion to combat the global AIDS pandemic. Again, that's for the whole world. And it's a campaign proposal.

I'm just not so sure why we need to spend so much on a potential problem when we are yet to live up to the demands of our existing ones.

Another tidbit that I found to be, well, sort of ironic had to do with religion. They were doing a story about a string of robberies that have happened in churches around the city, and some dude they were interviewing came on and said something like, "You can't steal from a church and then get into heaven. It's just bad Karma." Little eastern philosophy never hurt the protestant establishment, I suppose.

And, alas, I heard a story about the Intelligent Design debate. Several folks were on the air talking about how they have been shunned from their scientific communities for suggesting that Intelligent Design may be a valid theory. Well, I would have to guess that the reason for that is that Intelligent Design doesn't make any sort of scientific claims. They made comparison's to the rejection of Newton's theories when they were first presented. I wonder if they don't see that in order to disprove a long-standing theory, another scientifically-based theory really has to supplant it. At least, from my understanding, that's how human history has worked up to this point.

This all leads to a much bigger question: When did we become such a black-and-white society? Why is it that people can believe in either science or religion, but not both? The same is true in politics. You're either in favor of the Iraq war or you're helping terrorists. You support the Supreme Court nominee or you're an obstructionist, partisan complainer. You're in a red state or a blue state. You're in favor of the use of replay in baseball, or you're an old fogey who's hanging on to the good ole days. Such strong divisions, don't you think? Is there no middle ground left any more? Can't we raise concerns without being nay-sayers? Can't we have replay for home runs only? Maybe it's always been this way in our Fine Country, but I sure don't remember it being this intense.

Posted by ben at 4:48 PM | Comments (0)