Archive for January, 2008
Ersatz Apparel
Most likely much to your dismay, I, Shaj Mathew, am an unabashed soccer fan – (I had to clear that up so Kyle’s name isn’t affixed to such un-American heresy). Anyway, you should be safe, EIC readers, since I won’t delve into too much soccer here. As you see above, there lies the new USA Men’s National team kit — or, as my fellow soccer bloggers (at Sideline Views, SBI, and du Nord) have deemed, the Boring collection from Tommy Hilfiger. The USA’s uniform troubles have not gone undocumented indeed – Slate’s Michael J. Agovino wrote last year about the lack of a recogizable color or design juxtaposed against other prominent nations. Brazil has it’s canary yellow, France is les Bleus, and even Croatia is notable for their unique, checkered uniforms.
Frankly I think the new uniform looks incredibly vacuous, inappropriate (this isn’t polo), and just ugly. An improvement over the World Cup Kit was going to be difficult, but the designers at Nike really bungled this one. Indeed, The US jersey is just one of Nike’s many casualties: the commensurately atriocious Holland away kit and vapid Portugal home demonstrate their utter lack of sartorial prowess. The jury is out on the new adidas kits of the venerable European sides as well, as Germany ’s and France’s have failed to impress either.
However, it’s a good thing when uniform designs are one of the most pressing matters at hand. More Americans are heading abroad, and a plethora of young talent (Freddy Adu, Jozy Altidore – see the what we’re reading archive for more on Freddy) awaits the next World Cup in South Africa in 2010. The Nats first test on the pitch is coming up, as they take on Mexico February 6 on ESPN2 at 9 having enjoyed the better of their perennial rival as of late.
woe be unto the reader
It goes without saying that I enjoy reading – somewhere, amidst all the papers that litter (purposefully) my room, I have the Accelerated Reader badges from elementary school, and up to a few years ago, I could still fit my “I am an AR Star” shirt that I got in the fifth grade. My favorite series then was the Boxcar Children (I was a late convert to Harry Potter).
Now, my reading is almost purely (and at times depressingly) non-fiction: an endless stream of subscriptions to The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. You can usually catch me reading two books at a time, one fiction (if not literary) and one not. (I’m currently finishing Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence and am starting Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring).
Even as I fret over the lack of color in my reading (occasional pick-ups of The New Yorker or Atlantic), it also goes without saying that all of it is atypical (put kindly) compared to readers themselves, let alone my generation, or the nation as a whole. According to the NEA’s Reading at Risk, The nation’s readers have declined 7.3 percentage points from 56.9% in 1982 to 46.7% in 2002. And of those who do read, only 16% consume more than 12 books a year.
“My School’s Endowment is Bigger than Yours…”
The New York Times. Age of Riches: At Elite Prep Schools, College-Size Endowments
My own Philips Academy experience.
Today’s most popular New York Times article reveals the astronomical endowments of prep schools like Philips Academy Andover and Exeter. The schools, mostly concentrated in the northeast, boast endowments in the hundreds of millions and billions, exceeding most national universities.
Having attended Andover for the summer prior to my freshman year (the pictures are from my 1 month stay there), I can attest to the things a large endowment can afford. State of the art theatre, art galleries, and museums are located on the expansive campus swathed by quads and atmosphere more analogous to Harvard than your ordinary high school.
The best sentence known to mankind.
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
- Jack Kerouac
What a sentence.
Forget about all of the imagery, parallelism and the literary devices that make it special; for me, it’s holistically one of the most memorable sentences in the English language. Ever since I read it a few days ago I’ve been enamored with Kerouac, his alcohol and drug-induced prose, and his fellow writers of the Beat Generation, or beatniks.
It’s this sentence that has single-handedly inspired me to read Kerouac’s On the Road. His utterly insouciant, free-flowing style is something that you really don’t find in today’s modern literature, and it’s a real shame.
Houses of vacuous ability
An excerpt from Kansas, crossposted from Change Agency-
To venture into the heap of quotations that education has amassed over the years offers little hope for those who think kindly of the accelerating progress of thought and mind. It is by far not a tragedy – the ends sought have remained remarkably constant: to enlighten Plutarch’s “internal dank gloom” of a mind that has neither “dispelled nor dispersed” in the world’s symposium. What is unfortunate is that the means of achieving this enlightenment – schooling, as Mark Twain put it, has managed only to “interfere with my education.” It is the predicament of this gap between education and schooling with which the reformer is faced with today – its forms capable of manifesting only too easily with the advancement of time.
Schooling, where education enables, at its essence manages to best bring out the natural aversion to the disabling dogma of fact without purpose. It is an all too necessary aversion – the essence of innovation is dependent not on contentment with improving within the bounds of one’s current lot, but extending beyond it entirely to further collective progress. Neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins implores us that is an all too natural one as well – the framework of thought and creativity is brought about through the mind’s ability to establish analogies between otherwise unrelated aspects of life.
Obama takes shots at Clinton, Edwards…Using Comedy!
Obama is the only one laughing today.
Who knew Barack Obama was funny?
While other candidates are turning to scathing television ads, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama employed a little-used tactic to woo support and sarcastically berate his challengers: humor.
Attacking earlier statements from John Edwards and Hillary Clinton about their weaknesses, Obama offered this gem, via CNN Politics, an EIC favorite:
what we’re reading
Campaign songs Paul Farhi writes in today’s Washington Post about presidential candidates’ campaign songs, writing that they aren’t paying much attention to the lyrics. Case in point: Taking Care of Business just so happens to be about avoiding work. It is, however, one of the least suggestive campaign songs. – Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. is the de facto song of the Republican party; Mellencamp’s This Is Our Country is the Democrats’. “And although campaigns don’t need permission to use a pop song, … George W. Bush may have set the record for upsetting the most singers and songwriters” – pulling four songs over two elections. World Golf Tour Fortune Magazine has called it the World of Warcraft for suits – allowing you to play with friends from your web browser without additional software on famous courses meticulously converted from thousands of high-definition photos. nprmusic.org The best of NPR’s music programs – a tremendous library of live concerts, studio sessions, and interviews, in addition to streaming alternative, world, indie, jazz, and classical. Plenty of favorite lists and full song samples – check out M.I.A.’s interview where she plays songs from her critically acclaimed album.
- Image from worldgolftour.com
Congratulations John McCain — err Mitt Romney
It was fairly clear who won the Republican vote in Michigan last night. Unless you were a member of the Michigan GOP.
The GOP inadvertently disseminated a press release congratulating John McCain for winning Michigan at 9 p.m. last night even after the votes had been tallied and Romney had been declared the winner.
GOP Spokesman Bill Nowling said congratulations statements were readied for both candidates and they “simply pushed the wrong button.”
No such opportunity for gaffe was really afforded to the Democratic party, where it was a race between Hillary Clinton and the “Uncommitted” – people who supported John Edwards or Barack Obama. The two did not even put their names on the ballot, as the Michigan primary vote was essentially meaningless. The national party stripped the state of its delegates because it held its contest too early in the election season, and Clinton was the only major Democratic contender whose name appeared on the ballot.
Despite her win, bad news actually permeated through the Clinton camp. 70% of Michigan’s black voters cast “uncommitted” instead of her. CNN reports on how Hilary lost the black vote.
what we’re reading
College admissions The New York Times organized a discussion between readers and college counselors. It’s an interesting conversation – questions ranging from foreign languages, the importance of early action, how geography factors into admission decisions, when its best to drop an AP class – all this, and how 10 applications is not “unusual.”
Grading disparities Throughout the region, there are some wide disparities between grading systems: you need a 94 in Fairfax County to get an A on your report card. Jay Mathews writes in The Washington Post, “Standards for grading in the two counties, including bonus point calculations, are so out of sync that it appears possible for a Fairfax student to earn a 3.5 grade-point average for the same work that gets a Montgomery student a 4.6 GPA”
Freddy Adu The Washington Post profiled Freddy Adu over the winter break. Jason La Canfora writes, “Adu proved a quick study in one of the world’s premier leagues, earning playing time from the outset and becoming an important substitute for Benfica by chipping in goals and assists… After Adu’s third game-winning goal for the club the papers were filled with headlines like ‘The American Hero’ and ‘Freddy Saves Us Again.’” Freddy’s been helping on the international relations front too – a Communist Party member of parliament sent an e-mail to the Assistant Ambassador to the U.S., which read: “I love America.”
Didn’t Get into MIT? You can still watch the class.
Get an Ivy League education for free.
That’s the premise behind new initiatives from leading universities across the nation, which are now uploading entire year’s worth of introductory classes to the internet.
In the past year or so, leading universities such as MIT, Berkeley, and Yale have uploaded videos and podcasts of classes to their websites, like MIT’s OpenCourseWare, or to iTunesU – a new service from Apple where anyone can download and watch some of the best professors in the world teach a class, for free.
Don’t get your Chemistry teacher? Watch an introductory Chemistry class from MIT taught by one of America’s finest professors. Want to ace your next AP test? Get your supplementary material from a Yale class.
I’ve also began to use this service quite frequently as a complement to some of my (poorly taught) classes, as well as to simply take an interesting class on Shakespeare and the Humanities.
Some universities have placed their entire curriculum online – all of MIT’s 1800 courses are accessible – however, others have only posted the rudimentary freshmen courses.
Beware: there are some ‘lectures’ which are merely bland audio of a monotone professor.
Yet these are balanced out by the great performances by professors like MIT’s interactive, sarcastic, and well prepared (he ostensibly spends about 24 hours planning these video lectures) Walter H. G. Lewin
Shaj Mathew
kahutzler
