I was in the Sociology department the other day, working on a professor's computer. From the looks of the posters and such around the room, he was obviously a typical flaming elitist academic, but he was a very nice guy. And I say elitist in the real meaning of the phrase, not the Republican anti-intellectualism idea.
Anyways, Tulane has a very good Latin American studies program (2nd in the nation according to some estimates) and there is an upcoming conference on US-Cuba relations here. That was when he let out a comment, which I just found so typical of an elite academic. We were chatting about Cuba and he said something along the lines of," Yeah, I want to get there before the embargo ends and capitalism ruins it all." Smug and stupid.
The professor was obviously talking about the fact that Cuba is stuck in the 1960s. He wanted it to stay there, I suppose, as some kind of museum of the decade. But Cuba is not a museum, it is a country full of people. How many of them do you think like living in poverty, with no opportunities to advance? How many of them like driving 40-year-old cars, because that's all they can get? How many of them like the shoddy quality of products that do reach the island? How many of them like being arrested for expressing their political (or sexual) views? Given the numbers of Cuban emigrants over the last 40 years or so, I'd imagine is not too many.
Clearly, he had an idealized nostalgic view of what Cuba was. I'm sure if he visited, he might be fascinated. However, if he talked with Cubans...and perhaps had to live there for a year with rolling blackouts and the lack of work opportunities it provides, maybe he'd have a different view of it.
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Morning Verbal Diarrhea
This morning it was really nice out, mid-60s, clear blue skies, nice and sunny. I had an exam in Urban Econ at 9am, it went well, and on my way walking back I felt very relaxed, even though the exam was the least of my school-related burden right now, I think just because it was such a nice day out. I saw a plane ascending into the sky and had two thoughts- #1. I wonder where it's going? and #2. What a perfect day to fly. I don't know why, but everytime I see an airplane I think about where it's coming from, and where it's going to, and try to guess based on direction/altitude, ie- this one was obviously had taken off from New Orleans, and was flying northeast.
School has been absolutely oppressive recently. Two of my classes have a "sane" work-load and are very manageable, the other two have 20-25page papers due in a month or so and about a book of reading per week, it's really been getting to me lately. The positive, I guess, is once I finish these papers (I'm aiming to before Thanksgiving) the semester is more or less over, and so is college classes. The first two classes I mentioned with a sane workload have finals, one in-class and one relatively early during finals period, and don't concern me a whole lot, and the two insane ones have the papers as the final requirement. So I don't think there will be much stress for me finals week, and this semester has been hard but afterwords, I only need 1 econ class (econometrics), a public service internship, and possibly 1 history seminar (hopefully not if my Study Abroad class counts as it) to graduate. Optimally, I'll just have to take the first two next semester.
A final, and unrelated note- As I was walking home from my exam this morning (I walk down the famous St. Charles Avenue) I was watching the streetcars roll by. They each have one banner of advertising on the sides, and I noticed they were predominantly hospital-related, one for a hip replacement, another for general hospitals, etc. What does this say about their ridership? I'd assume "old people" but that generally doesn't seem to be true. Maybe some old tourists, though I don't think they are here for medical tourism, I'm not sure. One of the banners said you can now check online for wait times at Ochsner Baptist (which this morning are all at 0) for the emergency room. This kind of baffled me, isn't the point of the emergency room that it's the ultimate triage system? If you have the sanity/health/patience whatever to go online to look up who has the lowest wait times, I'm not sure you need to go to the emergency room. I mean who says "Gosh, someone shot me twice, but Ochsner Baptist has a 35minute wait, I better go to the Tulane Medical Center."
School has been absolutely oppressive recently. Two of my classes have a "sane" work-load and are very manageable, the other two have 20-25page papers due in a month or so and about a book of reading per week, it's really been getting to me lately. The positive, I guess, is once I finish these papers (I'm aiming to before Thanksgiving) the semester is more or less over, and so is college classes. The first two classes I mentioned with a sane workload have finals, one in-class and one relatively early during finals period, and don't concern me a whole lot, and the two insane ones have the papers as the final requirement. So I don't think there will be much stress for me finals week, and this semester has been hard but afterwords, I only need 1 econ class (econometrics), a public service internship, and possibly 1 history seminar (hopefully not if my Study Abroad class counts as it) to graduate. Optimally, I'll just have to take the first two next semester.
A final, and unrelated note- As I was walking home from my exam this morning (I walk down the famous St. Charles Avenue) I was watching the streetcars roll by. They each have one banner of advertising on the sides, and I noticed they were predominantly hospital-related, one for a hip replacement, another for general hospitals, etc. What does this say about their ridership? I'd assume "old people" but that generally doesn't seem to be true. Maybe some old tourists, though I don't think they are here for medical tourism, I'm not sure. One of the banners said you can now check online for wait times at Ochsner Baptist (which this morning are all at 0) for the emergency room. This kind of baffled me, isn't the point of the emergency room that it's the ultimate triage system? If you have the sanity/health/patience whatever to go online to look up who has the lowest wait times, I'm not sure you need to go to the emergency room. I mean who says "Gosh, someone shot me twice, but Ochsner Baptist has a 35minute wait, I better go to the Tulane Medical Center."
Friday, October 16, 2009
Changing of the Seasons
The changing of the seasons is usually a gradual shift between the long bright days of summer, and more cold, crisp days of autumn. This was not the case in New Orleans this fall, however. First, let me mention how much I miss fall back home. It may be my favorite season, there is just something special about it. The cold, the crispness, the rustling of fallen leaves, the explosions of colors in the trees, etc. The activities- doing corn mazes in a full moon, hayrides, or just walking through the forest with a pallet of colors surrounding you and a slight breeze.
Here in New Orleans we sort of had an Indian summer, I say "sort of", because, is it really an Indian summer if there's never any fall to begin with? It's normally hot and humid until late September, when it cools off and progressively turns into the 2nd season of Louisiana, not-summer. But up until yesterday, it was 90s and 90% humidity virtually everyday, and true to monsoon season, every afternoon there was intense rainstorms, sheets of rain pounding the sidewalk and the streets fill up with rain. There was a week break mid-September, but it was only false hope.
Last night the season changed in about 6 hours. Yesterday, there was a high of 92F, about 85% humidity, and an early afternoon shower. A powerful cold front came through, waking me up around 2am. I had just fallen asleep about 30minutes ago, having spent most of the night writing a paper on how I could fix all of Brazil's economic problems in 20 pages. (an exaggeration, of course) I was awoken by a crack of thunder, and the pounding of rain on the roof. I opened the blinds and watched the storm for a while, 30minutes, 2 hours, I'm not really sure. I watched as the pounding rain cleansed the sidewalks and streets of New Orleans, doing it far more efficient than any government service could do.
When I woke this morning to come to work, it was definitely a new season, that of not-summer. Not-summer in New Orleans is generally 70s of highs and lows of 50s, and a decent amount of wind. It's a bit chilly in the day, and colder at night, and progressively gets to the low of not-summer, which is high of mid50s and low of mid30s in the winter months of January-February. It rarely ever hits freezing temperatures here on the Southshore (south of Lake Pontchatrain) and if it does, the media issues plenty of freezing alerts.
I have to say, I'm glad it's not-summer. No longer do I break a sweat walking to campus and back. And I have to say, I think that the late summer makes the semester fly by even faster. When it feels like summer, you kind of forget it's September or mid-October. Now, it feels like school, and Thanksgiving is only a month and a week away, and thus, we only have 5-6 weeks left in the semester. Maybe Tulane should put that up on the admissions website as a per.
Here in New Orleans we sort of had an Indian summer, I say "sort of", because, is it really an Indian summer if there's never any fall to begin with? It's normally hot and humid until late September, when it cools off and progressively turns into the 2nd season of Louisiana, not-summer. But up until yesterday, it was 90s and 90% humidity virtually everyday, and true to monsoon season, every afternoon there was intense rainstorms, sheets of rain pounding the sidewalk and the streets fill up with rain. There was a week break mid-September, but it was only false hope.
Last night the season changed in about 6 hours. Yesterday, there was a high of 92F, about 85% humidity, and an early afternoon shower. A powerful cold front came through, waking me up around 2am. I had just fallen asleep about 30minutes ago, having spent most of the night writing a paper on how I could fix all of Brazil's economic problems in 20 pages. (an exaggeration, of course) I was awoken by a crack of thunder, and the pounding of rain on the roof. I opened the blinds and watched the storm for a while, 30minutes, 2 hours, I'm not really sure. I watched as the pounding rain cleansed the sidewalks and streets of New Orleans, doing it far more efficient than any government service could do.
When I woke this morning to come to work, it was definitely a new season, that of not-summer. Not-summer in New Orleans is generally 70s of highs and lows of 50s, and a decent amount of wind. It's a bit chilly in the day, and colder at night, and progressively gets to the low of not-summer, which is high of mid50s and low of mid30s in the winter months of January-February. It rarely ever hits freezing temperatures here on the Southshore (south of Lake Pontchatrain) and if it does, the media issues plenty of freezing alerts.
I have to say, I'm glad it's not-summer. No longer do I break a sweat walking to campus and back. And I have to say, I think that the late summer makes the semester fly by even faster. When it feels like summer, you kind of forget it's September or mid-October. Now, it feels like school, and Thanksgiving is only a month and a week away, and thus, we only have 5-6 weeks left in the semester. Maybe Tulane should put that up on the admissions website as a per.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Turning of the Tide for Apple?
Man, I've been posting a lot recently, I don't know why. Maybe my mind is reinvigorated after a summer of mindless relaxation. Anyways, this post was an interesting observation from move-in.
The last two years I've worked move-in as part of my job, with the IT department here at Tulane. We basically hook up computers and stuff to the wireless network, install antivirus software, etc, but it's mostly a waste of time because Housing doesn't give us a prominent location and freshmen are more interested in meeting people on their floor and going partying than anything else.
This year was a definite shift though, out of the computers I saw, the majority were Mac, and significantly so. I'd guess 65-70%. I wonder what Apple did to convince college students to go for an unfamiliar Operating System on hardware that is quite overpriced. Did the Justin Long Mac ads really have a powerful effect? Is it the familiarity with iPods, iPhones, and iTunes? I'd be interested to see, but it was surprising. Two years ago it was probably 45%, PCs outweighed Macs a bit, but now it's firmly in Macs camp. Thankfully most of the computers I work on, those of faculty and stuff, are PCs. I don't like troubleshooting Macs.
I would assume this isn't a Tulane thing, that this is a trend growing across US universities and colleges. Will this have any effect on the corporate world, or will people just adjust to PCs for work? Tulane has modified some of our administrative software to work on Macs at the request of some of our professors, for example. I would imagine because of the corporate-friendly nature of Windows (Home/Professional versions, more customizable rights-restrictions, etc) that it will continue to remain the OS of choice for the business world, but for the first time since I've been alive, with young consumers hooked on Macbooks, iPods, and iPhones, Apple has a significant chance at regaining its' former market share.
I wonder what impact 7 will have on this. Vista, regardless of its' technical abilities or failures, was a commercial bomb. XP has held up well, but Microsoft is intent on phasing it out. I've been demoing 7 for a bit, we got a VLK for it at work, and I've been relatively pleased. It's more efficient than Vista, there are some real improvements in the UI, etc. More than market it to consumers, if Microsoft is to continue being the force it has been, they must convince the corporate market to upgrade to 7, which has thus far shunned Vista in favor of XP.
The last two years I've worked move-in as part of my job, with the IT department here at Tulane. We basically hook up computers and stuff to the wireless network, install antivirus software, etc, but it's mostly a waste of time because Housing doesn't give us a prominent location and freshmen are more interested in meeting people on their floor and going partying than anything else.
This year was a definite shift though, out of the computers I saw, the majority were Mac, and significantly so. I'd guess 65-70%. I wonder what Apple did to convince college students to go for an unfamiliar Operating System on hardware that is quite overpriced. Did the Justin Long Mac ads really have a powerful effect? Is it the familiarity with iPods, iPhones, and iTunes? I'd be interested to see, but it was surprising. Two years ago it was probably 45%, PCs outweighed Macs a bit, but now it's firmly in Macs camp. Thankfully most of the computers I work on, those of faculty and stuff, are PCs. I don't like troubleshooting Macs.
I would assume this isn't a Tulane thing, that this is a trend growing across US universities and colleges. Will this have any effect on the corporate world, or will people just adjust to PCs for work? Tulane has modified some of our administrative software to work on Macs at the request of some of our professors, for example. I would imagine because of the corporate-friendly nature of Windows (Home/Professional versions, more customizable rights-restrictions, etc) that it will continue to remain the OS of choice for the business world, but for the first time since I've been alive, with young consumers hooked on Macbooks, iPods, and iPhones, Apple has a significant chance at regaining its' former market share.
I wonder what impact 7 will have on this. Vista, regardless of its' technical abilities or failures, was a commercial bomb. XP has held up well, but Microsoft is intent on phasing it out. I've been demoing 7 for a bit, we got a VLK for it at work, and I've been relatively pleased. It's more efficient than Vista, there are some real improvements in the UI, etc. More than market it to consumers, if Microsoft is to continue being the force it has been, they must convince the corporate market to upgrade to 7, which has thus far shunned Vista in favor of XP.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
From the Department of Theoretical Analysis
There's lot of posturing by Tulane to create the image that we are a much more important university that we are, but I figure that's normal among colleges in this range. By "this range" I mean good colleges that aren't quite elite, yet desperately want to be.
Nothing more is evidence of this than the amount of "Institutes" or "Centers" or "Offices" here at Tulane. I run into them via my job, and I swear, any Adjunct Professor has some interest in say, anxiety research and boom, we have the "Tulane Institute for Anxiety and Neurological Disorders." Or something like that. There's a ton of them at this school, and I would like to know how many of them have more than say 2 people working at them at a time. If it's a temporary research, you don't need this fancy name. If it's a project from 1 or 2 professors, it doesn't need a title. I don't know why it annoys me, but it does.
Nothing more is evidence of this than the amount of "Institutes" or "Centers" or "Offices" here at Tulane. I run into them via my job, and I swear, any Adjunct Professor has some interest in say, anxiety research and boom, we have the "Tulane Institute for Anxiety and Neurological Disorders." Or something like that. There's a ton of them at this school, and I would like to know how many of them have more than say 2 people working at them at a time. If it's a temporary research, you don't need this fancy name. If it's a project from 1 or 2 professors, it doesn't need a title. I don't know why it annoys me, but it does.
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