The Rogers News

Category: Commentary

  • America’s Blogiest Neighborhoods

    Outside.in is way to discover people and places in your neighborhood and community. I used to be a member, but never found enough information on my location to justify continued use. Regardless, the resulting data is somewhat interesting.

    From outside.in:

    What exactly are America’s bloggiest neighborhoods?The results below are based on a number of variables: total number of posts, total number of local bloggers, number of comments and Technorati ranking for the bloggers.

    1. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
    2. Shaw, DC
    3. Downtown LA
    4. Newton, Mass
    5. Rogers Park / North Howard Chicago
    6. Pearl District, Portland
    7. Watertown, Mass
    8. Harlem, NY
    9. Potrero Hill, SF
    10. Coconut Grove, FL

  • Proximity to Family

    Paraphrasing The View’s Joy Behar:

    Wealthy families and poor families tend to stick together, while middle class families tend to disperse geographically.

    There are a few ways to take this. Rich and poor children tend to be more dependent on their families than middle class children. Although I don’t have data, it would make sense that poor children would work with their parents to support a larger family unit, while children of wealthy parents are likely to remain under the family “umbrella” for a longer period of time. Conversely, middle class children seem to strive for more financial independence from their families.

    I moved away from my family for college, but I stayed in-state. After college, I moved further away from home because I was eager to work and prove my independence. I think as many 20 to 25 year olds will agree, proving your independence is easier said than done. After working for a couple of years, I opted to return to school and chose a law school further, rather than closer, to home.

    My motivation has been necessity, independence, and a desire to explore. I have not strived to be away from my parents, but rather followed what I thought to be the most enriching opportunity available.

    From being away from home, I’ve learned to appreciate my home town. My attitude has evolved from thinking there wasn’t much going on there to recognizing it is as busy and fulfilling as anywhere else I have lived or traveled.

  • Price Per Gallon

    When compared to the price per gallon of other liquids gas is relatively modest. I would argue that whether the price per gallon of gas is modest should also be judged with regard to the volume consumed and the demand for that liquid.

    Interesting to note that if my car, like my body, ran on coffee, purchasing 25 gallons of Folger’s home brewed coffee would only cost me $17.50. However, if I filled my car with Starbucks coffee at $1.86 / 16oz it would cost me $378.

    Here are some prices per gallon for various liquids (link):

    * Coffee – $0.70
    * Gas – $2.70
    * Milk – $3.79
    * Eggs – 5.76
    * Beer – $8.88
    * Chocolate Syrup – $13.23
    * RedBull – $30.69
    * Robitussin DM – 109.76
    * Scorpion Venom – $38,858,507.46

  • Virginia Tech Shooting

    The deadliest college campus shooting in history took place this morning at the Virginia Tech University. Over the course of three hours, a single gunman killed at least 32 students before taking his own life. (NYT Link)

    This is a horror that chills my soul on an already cold and stormy day. It’s rare that a headline makes my eyes tear up, but there is little else to do when reading something like this. I want to say this places the fragility of life in perspective, but that doesn’t seem just – not at the expense of 32 innocent students.

    What else is there to say?

  • Subway Violinist

    The Washington Post recently ran an article with video depicting Joshua Bell, a violin virtuoso, playing in a Washington D.C. metro stop during morning rush hour. The article notes that of approximately 1000 people to walk by the violinist, less than a dozen even seemed to notice.

    If I still lived in D.C. and I came across the performance, would I stop? Probably not considering that it was in the morning and I would probably be late.

    The article points out how people in Europe or Brazil would stop to take in the world-class entertainment, but what does that say? That the foreigners have more lenient bosses? That they have higher job security? Although we all may like to “stop and smell the roses” on the way to work, the world in which we live often does not allow such leniences.

    If the violinist played in the evening during the homeward commute, I posit that the reception would be much warmer.

  • Big Decisions

    Most of the last eight years of my life have been trying to figure out what I want to do with it. Getting an education was always a driving force in my decision making. At the end of high school the persistent question was where to go to college. For half of college the big question was what to major in. And after deciding that, where to work when I graduated. Working after graduating was interesting, however it wasn’t settling because it reminded me I had a lot more to learn, and kept me eager to go to grad school. So, during the two years I was working I was also focusing on where to go to law school. Now that I’m in law school, I’ll be looking for a job soon – a continuation of the two-year cycle. And I’m sure it will continue well into my life.

    The clip below is from an essay titled “The Power of the Marginal” by Paul Graham. It’s interesting with regard to how to select a major. I think the general principles of the excerpt can be extracted and applied beyond the university setting.

    One way to tell whether a field has consistent standards is the overlap between the leading practitioners and the people who teach the subject in universities. At one end of the scale you have fields like math and physics, where nearly all the teachers are among the best practitioners. In the middle are medicine, law, history, architecture, and computer science, where many are. At the bottom are business, literature, and the visual arts, where there’s almost no overlap between the teachers and the leading practitioners. It’s this end that gives rise to phrases like “those who can’t do, teach.”

    Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. When I was in college the rule seemed to be that you should study whatever you were most interested in. But in retrospect you’re probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who’s good at it than something very interesting with someone who isn’t. You often hear people say that you shouldn’t major in business in college, but this is actually an instance of a more general rule: don’t learn things from teachers who are bad at them.

  • Beyond YouTube

    We’ve all heard of people making fools of themselves on YouTube, but Justin.tv just seems weird to me. It is a 24/7 video and audio feed of a guy doing nothing special. He’s not an adventurer, a sports star, or a sweet sixteen-year old, which means he doesn’t qualify for A&E or MTV. It has been effective viral marketing, which has led to publicity – but publicity for what?

    It just seems like we should all have better things to do than watch someone else live their not-so-interesting life … or read my blog I guess. Ha.

    PS – I’m still trying to decide if the online mini-series “Prom Queen” is interesting. It is 80 two-minute episodes. They’re on episode seven or eight now.