Wallace Kaufman's Open Salon Blog

Harvard vs Motel 6

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 02:10:06 -0400

Nothing surprising in a recent NY Times article that says, "At private nonprofit colleges and universities, tuition rose 4.5 percent to an average of $27,293, or $36,993 with room and board." Costs rising 300% or more faster than inflation results largely from the fact that government unquestioningly agrees to give or lend students as much as it takes.

Colleges and universities have a blank check to spend, and no incentive to become more productive (provide more education for less cost). In fact, the trend is to provide less education at more cost. Semesters are shortened, grades are inflated, more adjunct professors are used, courses are dumbed down.

To see how shoddily colleges treat their customers, let's see how the $9,700 for room and board breaks down.

Here's the math:

$15 a day for food x 30 days x 9 months minus 35 vacation days, total 235 days. @$15 per day = $3,525 for food (Surely college food can be mass produced for $5 a meal)

$6,175 left for a room. $6,175 divided by 9 months = $686 a month to rent a single room, probably with a shared bath and a roommate.

If the room is shared with a roommate, the college is raking in $1,372 per room (about $45 a night, comparable to a basic motel but without the bathroom, free soap and shampoo, garbage service, high speed Internet, maid service, parking, and free continental breakfast).

Remember students who room off campus and feed themselves also get all the campus amenities and Internet, so the $6,175 is just the room. That seems to be the best our best academic minds, including universities that provide MBA degrees, can do.

If that doesn't seem like a rip off, let's try text books. Professors often force students to buy text books written by themselves or their friends at $50 to $100 a book when such books can now be produced by on-demand publishers for $5-$10 a copy. The cost would be even less if the books were published as e books for reading and annotating on an e book reader or computer.

These are often the same professors and universities that accuse the commercial world and capitalism in general of greedy profiteering. The same students who pay for the text books (or whose parents pay), are taught that a market system is predatory.

Is the game here that students who are exploited won't know it because they are too busy protesting the exploitation of others?

Perhaps, but equally likely is that since parents, not students, pay the incentive to protest is also missing. If parents don't pay, students can borrow the money. Talk about subprime and predatory lending.

No, The President Is Not A Racist

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 00:09:52 -0400

I have just read a long list of angry comments on President Obama's Friday night talk to the Congressional Black Caucus. Prominent among them--charges that he is racist.

To appear before a group that is all of one color, religion, or ethnic background and appeal for support is not racist—whether you are speaking to an all white Tea Party gathering (and most are mixed), or to the exclusively black Congressional Black Caucus as President Obama did Friday night.

While the President has much more often been a divider than a reconciler in his rhetoric and actions, his thinking is too confused and contradictory for him to be a dedicated racist, nor a socialist, Marxist, or aspiring dictator. (And he does not know enough about Islam to be a Muslim.) His speech to the Black Caucus was not racist, but once again he did more to divide than unite Americans or even Democrat and independent voters. Most important, he showed his ever-present insensitivity by insulting black Americans.

Consider these words, "I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, to go back to your workplaces, to go to the churches, and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops. And tell them we've got more work to do."

He might as well have suggested eating watermelon, shoe shine stands, shooting galleries, pool halls, and bars. And there he was talking to a gathering of black Americans in black tie dress who are at the height of their professional lives.

These same words also tell us that it’s okay to politicize our work places and churches. What happened to the days when civil libertarians objected so strongly to preachers and churches handing out political advice? Does he remember how his embrace of the highly politicized Rev. Wright almost cost him the election? Does he remember how embarrassed he was by certain business people, teachers, and non-profit workers using their workplaces to drum up support for him? Does he understand how divisive he’s been in favoring union workers over non-union workers when handing out government subsidies?

Another way he insults and stereotypes black Americans is by assuming they all think or should think the way he does. Let’s forgive this supposedly gifted writer for the having blacks simultaneously “sitting down . . . and standing up for freedom,” and note that his critics, including Tea Party activists, include prominent black people. They also fought for freedom. They criticize their president now, not because he is black, but because they believe he is destroying the freedom they cherish.

Does the president understand this? The answer to this question and the other questions, to be kind, is probably no, he doesn’t. He’s a lawyer, but he doesn’t understand that basic advice to lawyers: if you want to win your own case, you must first understand your opponent’s case.

Despite his much praised intelligence, it seems increasingly possible, that he is incapable of understanding his critics and even mutual enemies abroad.

This president, whose supporters often call a gifted writer and a man who appreciates the nuances and complexity of words, also appears to be tone deaf--like one of those people of very narrow brilliance who can do marvelous things, but is incapable of understanding how they effect others.

That is more charitable than the only other conclusion--he doesn't care.

Not So Straight From The Koran

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:08:53 -0400

Tonight I received an e mail from a very bright friend who emigrated from Russia in the 90s. He was forwarding versions of texts from the Koran with a brief opening claim--thus:

THIS IS STRAIGHT OUTA THE MUSLIMS TEACHINGS
> “Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies.”
> Koran 22:19
> “Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them.” Koran 47:4
> “The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.” Koran 8:65
> “Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.” Koran 3:28
> “Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.” Koran 8:12
> “Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.” Koran 8:60

I've translated from Russian, German, French and Spanish and well know the perils and temptations of translating. After a bit of research I wrote to my friend:

While I have no illusions about the dangers from certain Islamic countries and Islamic radicals, one has to be careful with translations. For instance 22:19 as far as I can see is in no way an order for any follower of Islam to punish someone. It's a description of Allah's punishment--what people suffer in Hell, and it's not unlike Christian versions of Hell, including the great poet Dante's description.

Worth checking these translations against a literal word for word translation: see: http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=22&verse=19

Here's what may be a reasonable translation:

How Terrible is Hell!*

19. Here are two parties feuding with regard to their Lord. As for those who disbelieve, they will have clothes of fire tailored for them. Hellish liquid will be poured on top of their heads.

20. It will cause their insides to melt, as well as their skins.

21. They will be confined in iron pots.

22. Whenever they try to exit such misery, they will be forced back in: "Taste the agony of burning."
---------------------------

Another example: 8:60. The text is about mounting a cavalry force for battle and seems not unlike some instructions to battle in the Old Testament. Then in the next verse, 8:61, we read:

"And if they incline to peace, then incline to it [also] and rely upon Allah. Indeed, it is He who is the Hearing, the Knowing."

The second problem with quoting the Koran is the question of how many Muslims take their Koran literally. Certainly many do, a lot more than Christians or Jews take their scriptures as literal truth. After all, while the Old and New Testaments were written down by "inspired" writers, Islam says the Koran was handed down word for word by Allah. That said, it's important to make distinctions among Muslims as we do among other believers. Many Jews eat pork, many Catholics practice birth control and get divorced.

While I lived and worked in Central Asia I had scores of Muslim friends, and besides being big drinkers, a common departure from Islam, none of them believed the prohibition against infidel friends, no less that they should behead me or boil me in water.

Long and short, as in all religions, the fundamentalists and zealots are most likely to be dangerous and put hatred of dissenters above civil law and tolerance. (And not all fundamentalists and zealots are dangerous. In fact, like Russia's Old Believers and some American fundamentalists, they are much more likely to be mocked and harassed by mainstream society, including "intellectuals", than they are to be terrorists.)

That said,the facts are very obvious that Muslim fundamentalists, unlike others, hold entire countries in servitude through fear, and they have been a breeding ground for violence and terrorism.

We need to act on those facts, but we are defeating ourselves if we stir people to action by falsifying the facts and debasing the language on which we depend for wisdom.

Mr. President: Teach Us To Read

Mon, 10 May 2010 01:05:00 -0400

News about a new law in Arizona that allows police to determine if a suspected criminal is a citizen, is being attacked by a legion of highly educated critics who have not bothered to educate themselves by reading the law they criticize.

The text of the law is readily available on several web sites. For instance: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf . To read the text and the changes made as it evolved, plus commentary, see: http://www.keytlaw.com/blog/2010/04/anti-illegal-immigration-law-part-1/

As the anti-Arizona law bandwagon of the self blind-folded, educated elite rolled onto Main Street, President Obama jumped on board. The Arizona law, he said, “threaten(s) to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”

The Arizona law largely requires state law enforcement officials to enforce with existing federal law. Example: the requirement that non-citizens carry identification papers, a federal law since 1940. The President and other critics should have the decency to cite what particular words and phrases in the Arizona law make them charge Arizonans with racism and ethnic prejudice.

However, this is the same president and former professor of Constitutional law and former Editor of Harvard Law Review who called a Rhode Island cop “stupid” before he knew the facts about why the cop arrested a man who seemed to be breaking into a house. This is the same president who pronounced an accused terrorist guilty before trial and promised he would be executed.

And this is the same president and these are his same supporters who insisted that Americans support a 2000 page, $1 trillion law to transform American health care before anyone, including most of them, had a chance to read it. That bill, of course, is often unintelligible and ambiguous. The Arizona law is clear and unambiguous.

Pundits of all stripes often tout this president as being our smartest president in a century. Here too they cite nothing specific. On the Arizon law the President has yet another chance to demonstrate not only his intelligence but his respect for his critics' intelligence.

Perhaps the Arizona law has some grievous flaws that are not apparent to a non-lawyer who reads the actual text. Mr. President, you promised to be a healer, a reconciler, a man who honors honest debate and listens to good argument. So, please cite the text and give us your good argument. If we are misreading some important clauses, please correct our reading rather than assault our intelligence.

Spiritual or Material: Teach Your Grandmother Egg Suction

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:04:24 -0400

The wise people who appoint themselves the guardians of the American soul have been telling us since the publication of Walden by Thoreau over 150 years ago, that materialism and mass production have doomed us. Like Thoreau they bring us the antidote of the spiritual Asian--Thoreau's Hindu meditator or today's idealized Tibetan Buddhists. Not to mention that the publishing industry often mass produces books called the Zen of this or the Zen of that.

Our most prominent American poet, Robert Frost dealt deftly and devilishly with the idea of Asian spiritual exceptionalism and American sin in an almost unknown poem from a 1947 collection. Some people have trouble grasping it, though it seems simple. First the poem, then my notes in case Frost is not clear.

An Importer

Mrs. Someone’s been to Asia,
What she brought back would amaze ye.
Bamboos, ivories, jades, and lacquers,
Devil-scaring firecrackers,
Recipes for tea with butter,
Sacred rigmaroles to mutter,
Subterfuge for saving faces,
A developed taste in vases,
Arguments too stale to mention
‘Gainst American intervention;
Most of all the mass production
Destined to prove our destruction.
What are telephones, skyscrapers,
Safety razors, Sunday papers,
But the silliest evasion
Of the truths we owe an Asian?
But the best of her exhibit
Was a prayer machine from Tibet
That by brook power in the garden
Kept repeating Pardon, pardon;
And as picturesque machinery
Beat a sundial in the scenery –
The most primitive of engines
Mass producing with a vengeance.
Teach those Asians mass production?
Teach your grandmother egg suction.

---------------------

If that was clear, read no farther because my notes are unnecessary prose.

The poem is easy enough to understand if you summarize the story:

--Back from Asia comes Mrs. Someone (not important enough to name, and like many unimportant thinkers)

--She has lots of "art" and a new criticism of America

--America, she says, has lost its soul to mass production while Asians express their souls in artful and personal handwork.

--Our spectacular displays of technology, from gadgets to skyscrapers are our way of avoiding the spiritual truths of Asia (sound somewhat like all the aficionados of Tibetan culture?)

--America has doomed its soul with such impersonal and material stuff

--to show Asian spirituality she has brought home a prayer wheel powered by the flow in her brook

--it uses a primitive engine to mass produce what--prayers!

--we have nothing to teach the Asians about mass production; they are ahead of us, having extended mechanical mass production to spirtual matters

Frost foresaw the Asian ability long before the Asians really got started in mass production for Nike and Walmart.

One might also note that while the decadent Americans were creating national parks and forests and preserving farmland, the more spiritual Asians of the Mongolian steppe and Tibetan highlands had devastated their environment by overgrazing and a classic demonstration of the 'tragedy of the commons'.