March 2006 Archives

Mississippi was incredible. HIllel International organized three weeks of college Spring Break trips to Gulfport, MS and I attended week #2 with some fellow Tigers. (In fact, MIT, including trip member Amy D, is there this week.) Our week consisted of 130 people, 10 from each school (9 students and 1 staff member). I was one of two grad students on the trip, and the population was about 85% Jewish. We stayed at a makeshift camp on a Presbyterian Church site, which was run by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. We slept in "pods", which were basically plastic tents with cots in them. The pods held either 3 or 10 people, depending on size, and were separated by sex.

We got in four-and-a-half solid days of work on houses (Wednesday afternoon we traveled to New Orleans), with wakeup at 6am and us arriving at the site by around 7:30 (depending on traffic). We would stretch and do some group bonding while waiting for our exact work assignments. Other than a break for an on-site lunch, we would roof or build houses until 4:30pm. Lots of hammering and moving heavy objects. I'm sure you'll all be glad to know that we were putting on architectual shingles, which hold up much better in storms than the standard "3-tab" variety.

As for hurricane destruction, within a half-mile of the coast it was total. Entire neighborhoods just gone. The picture reminded me of the scene in the movie version of A Series of Unfortunate Events where the kids return to their burnt home. I remember thinking at the time that destruction of that magnitude was unrealistic -- I couldn't have been more mistaken. New Orleans sustained a different type of damage. There the water came in through the breached levies, rose to 9 feet and stayed there long enough to leave a water mark. House after house after house on the streets of Lakeview were standing but completely unsuable. Experts estimate will take 8-10 years to return the area to its pre-Katrina form.

I'll be adding more about my trip to Gulfport, MS over this week. Feel free to request elaboration on any of the following topics in the comment section: how to roof, destruction details, New Orleans day trip, staffer bios, other student bios, general debauchery, songs we sang, food, speakers (e.g., FEMA) and how we kept ourselves entertained.

Unedited pics here (a few more to come).

I'll be out of contact for the week. Instead of spending my time disentangling formal theories of political economy, I'll be fixing holes in people's roofs in Gulfport, MS. Will let you know all about it (with pics hopefully) by Tuesday a week. And to all my Princeton friends: enjoy the break!

Normally this time of year I get all excited about my NCAA picks. Well, not so much this year for a number of reasons. First, as next week is Spring Break, I'll be missing all the regional action since I'll be spending that week in Gulfport, MS to help with Hurricane Katrina recovery. Second, read this post from a year ago, and simply replace Bucknell with Bradley to get a feel for my sentiments this year. Once again I picked Kansas as one of my five teams in my family's pool, and once again they lost in the first round! I'm a moron. You know, I think the fact that Kansas was so good when I was a kid has subconsciously skewed my preferences to choose them. No more: I've touched the pot on the stove enough times now, and have learned my lesson. (Don't pick Kansas. Don't pick Kansas. Must keep repeating...) A third reason I'm not all that excited about the NCAA's this year is that my uncle hasn't emailed out other people's picks, thereby relieving me of my obsessive compulsion to constantly update the scoreboard or write PHP code.

In other news, Chicklet came to visit yesterday because I made my Princeton debut as leader of Shabbat services. I only made one mistake, which is obviously one more than the goal, but I'll take it. (The mistake was that I wanted to do the "MIT" tune to a psalm, but I've been assimilated to Tiger culture so much that the "Princeton" tune was stuck in my head. I ended up just reading the three lines in some halfway fashion with the congregation sufficiently confused :) And dinner at Hillel/CJL was more or less devoid of undergrads, thanks to Spring Break, creating a different (better? less pretentious?) atmosphere.

My teaching of Trenton high school seniors continued yesterday, with the upbeat topic of genocide as the theme. We began with a lecture about how countries interact, which imparted the knowledge of what an embassy is. (Useful info if any of them ever travel abroad, and a word none of them knew beforehand.) We then broke out into groups and discussed the Rwandan genocide. My group focused on how to prevent genocide, namely by making sure the two sides of the conflict communicate with one another and avoid hate-filled language. We discussed the mentality of fearing another culture or race. The kids seemed to understand, but unfortunately, I don't think they retained much. Ah well, a worthy effort.

This week's newspapers have been filled with stories about Democrats' silence on the Feingold censure resolution. Hopefully ARG's new poll, which shows a plurality of adults (46%) and an even higher percentage of voters (48%) supporting censure, will wake the sleeping Democratic Senators. I've called both my Senators urging them to support the right honorable gentleman from Wisconsin. Here are three reasons why all Democrats should do the same.

1) The president broke the law. Unconvinced of the veracity of that statement? Just check out the second half of this post. Letting the President go above the law is a precedent no one should want to set.

2) From a strategic point of view, we need to prolong this debate. The more days the press is discussing whether and how the President broke the law, the better. The simplest mechanism for such a lengthy national conversation is congressional hearings. Unfortunately, 8 days ago, the Senate Intel Committee balked at performing its primary duty--to provide executive oversight. The only way we'll get to hearings now is if Republicans such as Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe (who sits on the Intel Comm) to propose hearings as a compromise between censure and no action.

3) Censure is not overreaching. See the ARG poll for evidence. No one is mistaking this action with attempting to throw the President out of office. As Feingold said to Soledad O'Brien, we'll have a Dem President in two-and-a-half years anyway. Let's focus on preventing this and future presidents from breaking the law.

Call your senators.

My prof is going over last week's homework, even the questions everyone got correct. Since, at the post-half-marathon brunch, several people knew each other through a couple degrees of separation (including our server to two guests!), I'll try to explain some of these relations to the tune of the 12 days of Christmas.

12 twenty-somethings
11 omnivores
10 college graduates
9 MIT affiliates
8 engineers
7 young women
6 Second Easters
5 'puter programmers
4 members of the tribe
3 bio majors
2 engaged couples
...and one person whose coworker was the server's roommate

Okay, that wasn't as funny as I thought it might be, but at least it kept me entertained.

The Half-Marathon went very well; I ran under a 10.5min miles, well faster than what I ran in practice. Everything went so well (weather, muscles, etc): the only slight snafu was that my running pack kept slipping off my left shoulder during the beginning of the race. But a creative use of my headphone wire took care of that. Race results are here--I borrowed a registration, so you'll have to look me up using my 1857 bib number. (I thought 1857 was an inauspicious number considering the quality of the President inaugurated that year--but the lack of a six was a good omen.)

In addition to the half marathon, the trip to Boston went smoothly. Our fearless leader, Arielle, set up a fun pre-race carbo loading at Jake's house. And I invited friends and family to a celebration post-race brunch. Twelve were seated around the table in both events: (Prof Trelawny would be happy.)

From today's Washington Post:

Separately, the Senate approved by voice vote an amendment by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would deny to any lawmaker a pay increase that he votes against but that eventually becomes law.

I have to assume that Inhofe's motivation is to force lawmakers to "put their money where their mouth is", but I doubt the law will have the intended effect of having fewer Nay votes on pay raise roll calls. Previously, if you were a Senator with a tight re-election coming up, your opponent could point out how much you make and the fact that the Senate voted for a pay raise "at a time when many Americans are losing their jobs" (or whatever the standard lit piece says). Under Inhofe's rules, you can proclaim from the rooftops how you've sacrificed your salary for the good of the people and how you actually do make less money than some of your colleagues. You'd have to be quite the cash-strapped Senator for those extra few thousand dollars per anum to register significantly on your utility curve.

Although, maybe with the other changes mentioned in the article (which dealt with lobbyist reforms), more Senators will be lining up on the welfare queue. Or not.

Went to Trenton to teach high schoolers geography on Friday morning. Fellow Princetonian Lilly and I taught two hour-long sessions. We were told beforehand that the students would be very well-behaved since this particular high school is actually for young adults over 18 who previously missed schooling (due to work, familial responsibilities, etc). Thus, they have no legal obligation to attend. Unfortunately, their behavior was lacking. On the other hand, they were certainly up for academic challenges. Perhaps we just need to motivate them more. The first week's lesson was how to use an atlas and linking countries to current events, which I think was about the correct level of difficulty. (I'm not sure what the lesson is for next week yet.)

Friday night, Princeton Hillel (or CJL, as we call it here) hosted Quipfire, a Princeton improv group, to perform after Shabbas dinner. Having seen Fizzy Dice's lackluster performance recently, I was pleasantly surprised by Quipfire's laughs per minute ratio. They had a great short-form skit where three celebrities sit down for dinner, but no one knows who they are and each pair of performers has to drop clues for the third so they can order an "appropriate" dish at the end.

Speaking of improv, I was watching Who's Line last week and Ryan Stiles, while imitating "Carol Channing with a head that sticks to things" for the game Party Quirks, slammed his head into the Drew Carey's desk. The impact shattered the neon light that outlines the show's logo -- lucky for Ryan he wasn't bleeding. I think I can use this incident the next time someone claims that the show is actually scripted.

Saturday, Chicklet and I headed into the city for Shabbat services. We went to a synagogue that Mordechai Kaplan founded! The downside was the we were the only people between the ages of 18 and 35 in the room. Still, the sanctuary was beautiful, and so was the Cantor's voice. (I should stop the list of what was beautiful here, lest I break any commandments.) We then had Thai food, and did a little shopping.

On the subject of shopping, I just made an impulse buy for the first time since ... I don't know when, but it's been a while. I was walking back from the bank (after depositing a stipend check, which probably had something to do with my spur-of-the moment purchase) and wanting to procrastinate from doing work, I stuck my head into a local bookstore. There I saw Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. I picked it up and read a few thoroughly enjoyable pages about grammar sticklers. Since I'm on the last chapter of my current pleasure book (Brian Greene's Elegant Universe), I decided to purchase Truss's work without even looking at the price. At the register, I was a little surprised by the $21 price tag for such a small volume (check out Amazon's price), but by then I was past the point of no return. It'll make a great addition to my bookshelf at any rate. (And who knows, maybe I'll finally learn how to keep my tenses consistent and properly use commas.)

Sunday, after our last training run for the half marathon, some old MIT friends stopped by completely unexpectedly. I couldn't be too upset about the lack of a warning email since they brought good news. More marriages on the way! Ah, the life of a twenty-something :)

H(eadline)OTD: "9/11 case prosecutor: 'He lied and 3,000 people died'" (CNN) -- Who, Bush?

So you've probably heard the rumor that running on pavement was bad for your knees. Well, I never believed it (our ancestors didn't exactly run on a rubber ground) -- until now. I'm training for a half-marathon in 10 days and the past few weekends have been running double digit milers. And my knees hurt; or, at least they did. The first couple weeks were difficult, but my legs seemed to have adjusted. But, let this be a warning to anyone who wants to start long-distance running and doesn't have a nice stretch of beach to use: have some ice packs at the ready.

The marathon is in Boston on the 12th. Anybody reading this who lives in Beantown (or the suburbs thereof) is welcome to a celebration lunch that day. Exact time and location TBD. For the curious, I'm a pretty slow runner: my goal is to run 11-11:15 minute miles on race day. I've always been a sprinter (hence playing goalie for my entire youth soccer career), but I'm trying to branch out.

News since I last blogged: I'm co-authoring a paper with a professor, Kosuke Imai, and yesterday we submitted the work to the annual political methodology conference. It's on ecological inference; which basically means deriving individual behaviour from aggregate data. Not an easy problem, but we think we've made a decent contribution to the literature.

Events I attended: The Vagina Monologues at Princeton. A decent performance, with huge props to the two Woody Woos who created and preformed their own, original monologues. One had half the auditorium in tears. Waiting for Godot, done by Princeton seniors: an impressive production, one where the audience experienced the waiting first hand. Fuzzy Dice, the Princeton Improv group: where Kate and I learned that Princeton undergrads don't know big words (ebullient) but love Harry Potter references.

The kids. Played a big game of cricket with them and learned a great life lesson: While many sports (soccer, football, etc) lend themselves to being fixed (i.e., ensuring the outcome between the teams is a tie), cricket is not one of them. The team I wasn't on batted first and scored 11 runs. Then the two girls on my team scored 7 before being out, and I was left to score the final four. Well, scoring the four runs was not difficult, but then getting put out proved difficult. First I tried swinging and missing, but the ball absolutely refused to hit the wicket. Next, I popped up several times in a row, but the fielders proved incapable of catching the ball on the fly. I finally, reluctantly, hit a simple grounder and made a run for the other wicket. The throw from the fielder beat me by a good two steps but failed to hit the pile of clothes that represented the wicket, and my team won. Ah, well, maybe next time...

Tomorrow I start community service in Trenton. We (a group of Princeton students) are going to be teaching basic geography to the daylight-twilight high school. I'll let you know how it goes.