Two Years…

16 Apr 2009, 19:46

Two years ago today, I huddled in my office, next to the wall away from the window, wondering what was going on.  None of the things that I imagined, though, prepared me for what had actually happened.  Even when I left my building, still knowing nearly nothing, and saw the long, long line of ambulances, my brain was coming up with wild, implausible explanations about why so many ambulances had responded to the scene.  (It reminds me of 2001/9/11.  When the first plane hit, I thought, like everyone, that it was some sort of uber-tragic accident.  When the second plane hit, all I could come up with was that the second pilot was trying to get a look at the first tower.  You know, like a rubbernecker on the highway.  Totally implausible.  Ludicrous, really.  But our brains are wired to explain things — to fit the messy, uncomfortable world into our neat and tidy little boxes.)  My first Ph.D. student was in the car with me when the news came on the radio that many had been killed.  I prattled incoherently with disbelief.  

In any case, it is apparently my tradition to write a blog post on the anniversary of this event.  The year it happened, I was on hiatus from blogging.  When I returned to the blog in August, though, I posted the email that I sent to family and friends a few days after the tragedy, telling my tiny version of the story.  Last year, I posted some remembrances of Kevin Granata.

This year, I have little to say.  I planned to run in the 3.2 mile Run in Remembrance this morning, but the children had a bad night last night and I didn’t make it out the door in time.  I didn’t feel up to attending the memorial at noon today.  I’m in the midst of trying to fight through the end of a tough semester for me, and I just didn’t have the strength to reopen the wounds of 2007 any more than necessary.

For the last few weeks, I considered writing this post about the things that have changed at VT in the last two years, especially details regarding campus communications and security.  Some of the changes are probably for the better:  The new campus notification system has perhaps been overused, but I think it is basically a good thing.  It has many potential applications in many circumstances — natural disasters, weather emergencies,  and so on.  Other changes do nothing other than defend against the second coming of Seung-Hui Cho, an event so unlikely that the probability of it happening again cannot even be computed.  Most notably in this category: Virginia Tech has removed one of the handles from every set of exterior double doors and replaced all crash bars with push panels to make chaining the exterior doors impossible (or at least difficult).  The fact that Cho chained the doors of Norris Hall, making it difficult for his victims to escape and delaying the entry of the police into the building, is among the many disturbing details of that 2007 day.  But the main effect of replacing the hardware on every exterior door on campus is to ensure that every time anyone enters or leaves a building, he or she is reminded of this disturbing detail.  The probability that this expensive effort will ever stop, or even mitigate, another act of violence is vanishingly small.  But its impact as a constant reminder to thousands on campus every day is absolutely certain.

Nevertheless, I decided that I wouldn’t write a whole post on these changes, because it seems to trivialize that which we remember today.  So, what is different in our hearts and minds two years on?  The sting has faded a bit.  I actually found myself wondering today whether it was possible that a day had passed without thinking of that terrible day.  My conclusion was that, no, it is not possible.  Not yet, and not with constant reminders like shiny new push panels and missing handles on exterior doors.  But the fact that it is even conceivable that, someday, a day might pass for me without a thought of 2007 April 16 is comforting.  There are some for whom such a day will never arrive.  Today we remember them: Those who were taken from us, and those they left behind.

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Electric Cars? For Reals?

14 Apr 2009, 19:43

I’m not anticipating a real blog recovery until this semester ends.  And when it does, I’ll say good riddance.  It has been a rough one for me, for reasons that I don’t entirely understand.   (The only “reason” that I’ve been able to come up with is that I didn’t get as “caught up” as usual during the Winter Break.  And that after starting the semester behind, I’ve never recovered.)  In the meantime, I keep coming up with posts, and then never getting around to posting them.  Here’s a quick one, though.

A few weeks ago, I read this David Pogue interview with Shai Agassi, the CEO of Better Place. (You can watch part of the interview on CBS here.) I was intrigued, but didn’t think much more of it.  Then, today, I ran across a video of Agassi’s talk at TED.  I watched it this evening, and I must say, I’m starting to believe.  This guy and his company may have an intriguing piece of the solution to the climate puzzle.  It will be interesting to see how their rollouts in Israel, Denmark, and Australia go.  It sounds to me like they haven’t quite figured out how to crack the U.S. nut, but if their initial rollouts go well, then I expect that the U.S. will come on board relatively quickly.

Here’s the TED video:

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Why I Oppose the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)…

22 Mar 2009, 20:32

First let me say that it is terrifically lame that I have fallen off the posting-every-week bandwagon.  Sorry.  I’ll try to get back on soon, but this semester is killing me.  Somehow, I didn’t get as caught up as usual over the holiday break, and I’ve never recovered.  Graduation is only 8 weeks away, though…  Nevertheless, this post has been brewing in my head for the last few days, and I thought that I should go ahead and bang it out.  Moreover, I’m really tired of having my most recent post be about Neti pots.

Given my progressive stand on most issues, one might expect me to fall into line and support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).  But I don’t.  I think it’s terrifically undemocratic and a terrible idea.  I think this mostly due to personal experience.  Allow me to explain.  

Early in my final year of graduate school, representatives of the now defunct Cornell Association of Student Employees - United Auto Workers (CASE-UAW) came into my office trying to get people in my office to sign cards in support of the unionization of Cornell graduate student employees.  The organizers told my international student, non-native English speaking colleagues in no uncertain terms that signing a card did not indicate support for a union, only that one wished for a vote to be held on the issue.  I read the card, though, and established that this was flatly, patently false.  The card clearly stated that one wished to be a member of a bargaining unit and to be represented by CASE-UAW.  I pointed this out to the organizers and (I found out later) was immediately branded “uncooperative” on their list of graduate students.  From that point on, they never again approached me about their efforts, and they refused to talk to my office mates in my presence.  This despite the fact that, at the time, I hadn’t really yet formed a strong opinion one way or the other on the issue.  

A key provision of the EFCA is that it would make it possible to form a union based solely on card signing.  The alternative, which is currently the law, is that employers can require a secret ballot election prior to the formation of the union.  I know about these elections because one was ultimately held at Cornell.  They are run by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  They are true secret ballot elections.   

There is a reason that secret ballot elections are the foundation of democratic societies.  It’s because they are democratic.  Card signing is not democratic, in my view, because there is no way to know the circumstances under which the card was signed.  Like in my colleagues’ case, the card might have been signed under the influence of a lying union organizer.  Or under threat, or promise.  Cards can even be bought.  A secret ballot, though, is secret.  No matter how many external factors may have tried to influence your vote before the election, when you step into the voting booth you are free to vote your conscience.  When you leave the booth, you (in theory) have no way to prove to anyone how you voted.  

To briefly recount the rest of the story at Cornell: Unlike other universities, who had fought the unionization of graduate students tooth and nail, Cornell reached an agreement with CASE-UAW.  (Other universities argued that graduate students had no right to unionize under federal and state laws.)  Cornell agreed that they would recognize and bargain with CASE-UAW, with the proviso that CASE-UAW had to win a NLRB representation election.  (This is exactly the provision of  the law, allowing companies to require an election prior to union formation, that EFCA seeks to change.)

Believing, among other things, that CASE-UAW was not the right union for Cornell graduate students, several other graduate students and I formed a group called At What Cost? to oppose CASE-UAW in the NLRB representation election.  CASE-UAW was defeated in a landslide.  (Why on earth would Ivy League graduate students want to be represented by the UAW?  I really can’t fathom it, even now.)  I thought that I had told that story in some detail in the archives of the blog, but it appears that I haven’t — although I mentioned it several times back in 2002 when it was happening.

So, that is why I oppose the EFCA.  I generally support unions; I think they have done great things for this country.  I’m not even, in principle, opposed to graduate student unionization, although I think it’s a difficult issue.  (The difficulty hinges on the fact that graduate students are usually both students and university employees.)   But I don’t think that a secret ballot election is an abnormally high standard for the formation of representative body.

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Neti Pot

19 Feb 2009, 20:25

Also, I used a Neti pot for the first time today.  It was every bit as weird and gross as I expected, but also strangely refreshing.  (And, really, that’s all I’m going to say about that.)  The jury is still out on effectiveness.  I think I’ve had a low grade upper sinus infection for a month or more.  Ugh.  But since I finally figured out that I have a sinus infection, I’m attacking with industrial strength decongestants and a Neti pot.  If I’m not significantly improved my Monday, then I think I might actually go to the doctor.

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White House Blog Redux

19 Feb 2009, 20:18

In direct response to my complaint, I am sure, the White House Blog now seems to be putting their full posts into their RSS feed.  But, they still seem to be struggling with other aspects of the technology.  

First, a few days ago, they republished every story they have ever published to the RSS feed.  Whoops!  

Then, today, while “liveblogging” Obama’s trip to Canada (which seems dumb to me anyway), their liveblog post showed up in my feed reader (Google Reader) over and over and over again.  I suspect this means that every time they edited the post, their blogging software gave the post a new GUID.  (That’s a Globally Unique IDentifier.  It’s how your RSS reader software can tell whether or not a post is “new.”)  So, every time Google crawled their site today, they saw a new GUID and thought it was a new post.  I have noticed this with a few other posts showing up more than once (presumably when edited), but didn’t think much of it.  But this behavior is wrong, wrong, wrong.  Updated posts should maintain the same GUID.  Blog software should be smart enough to see that the post has changed and act accordingly, but (in my opinion) the post shouldn’t be marked as new.  And even if the reader does mark a changed post as “new” it certainly shouldn’t show the same post multiple times in the timeline.

They’ve also started posting more frequently and getting a little more starry eyed.  (There were five posts today — two about the First Lady, two about the Vice President, and one about the President’s Canadian adventure.)  As I said, my patience for such things is short.  And it’s quickly running out.

Update (20 Feb): So, not content with my speculation, I decided to take a look at their RSS feed.  It’s even worse than I thought!  The same story appears multiple times in the feed in multiple versions.  At this very moment, the feed contains 13 versions of the “Liveblog: The President in Canada” post, as well as two versions of many other posts.  This is complete madness.

(I’m posting today mostly to get going again.  I didn’t post last week, the first week I’ve missed in 2009, and I’ve had the crud all week this week, so I’m going to bed early again tonight.  Hence, nothing deep, just a minor annoyance.)

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Starbucks Cup Quote

6 Feb 2009, 13:24

The job of choosing quotes for Starbucks cups is one that I would definitely enjoy.  Here’s one I got today.  I actually got it a few weeks ago, but forgot to note it.  I even went looking for it on the Starbucks website, but they only have a small collection of them on the website.  This is #76, which is too early for the Starbucks website.  I find this annoying, but anyway.  

I especially like the fact that this quote is from a random Starbucks customer rather than a “famous” person.

The quote deals with an issue I’ve been struggling with for a while.  You see, commitment is more about what you decide not to do than what you decide to do.  I have trouble deciding not to do things.

“The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating — in work, in play, in love.  The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation.  To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.”  - Anne Morriss, Starbucks customer from New York City.

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