Jan 15
AndrewPolitics and Nation, Society and Culture Laws, Smoking
Question: Do you buy the smoking ban argument as a public health measure?
Answer: The “public health” concern isn’t actually addressing the smokers, but the damage caused by secondhand smoke. Employees who work in smoking environments, like casinos, suffer similar damage to their bodies as their smoker counterparts. Susceptibility to lower respiratory track infections and asthma have been identified as damage from secondhand smoke, and in some cases, so has lung cancer and stroke.
Secondhand smoke makes for an easier political argument because it doesn’t explicitly single out the smokers (even if the law itself does). Of course, what has happened in cities where the smoking ban is in effect is that smokers just stand in the doorway and patrons have to walk through a cloud of smoke just to get inside (ever try going to a bar in Boston on a cold winter day and you are practically enveloped by a cloud of cigarette ash making your way inside). Why not make them stand at least 10 feet from the building if you’re going to push them out in the cold anyway?
The state of Indiana is going through the process of trying to pass a bill that would ban smoking in workplace environments. They are deliberately playing up the secondhand smoking effects as a worker protection right. The first attempt at a bill failed last year, and it’s not clear that enough traction exists to get a new version to the floor of the state legislature.
Part of the problem is that employers don’t necessarily support the bill. Casinos and bars, for one, often find themselves lobbying against new legislation, or at least arguing that the bill include certain exceptions to allow them to conduct business as usual. And those employers maintain that if you apply for that kind of job, it is with the understanding of the kind of environment you will have to work in.
Interestingly, the American Lung Association and other organizations that lobby for smoking restrictions play up the number of deaths caused by tobacco use and often talk about how the government has failed to enact enough measures on behalf of the American people. By one estimate, more than 400,000 Americans die every year from diseases related to smoking and secondhand smoke. The premise is the basis for the State of Tobacco Control 2008 report that graded state governments and the federal government on regulations and policies related to tobacco. Those policies would include smoke-free work environments, higher cigarette taxes and tobacco-cessation programs. Twenty-three states currently have smoke-free air laws that are aimed at places of employment.
New York City is currently running an anti-smoking campaign on television that is pretty hard to watch. The commercials are graphic representations of the physical damage smokers suffer. The effectiveness of those types of cessation programs is debatable, but since New York leads the pack on smoking regulations, it seems like this is the next step in the fight to eradicate cigarette use.
It is always interesting to me when the government gets involved in health issues (like the trans fat menace and nutrition facts on restaurant menus) to see which issues have the momentum with the public. The smoking ban definitely does. But here’s one curious fact, while cigarette sales have declined around 20% in the last ten years, sales of other tobacco products has seemingly taken its place. So are Americans smoking less but using largely the same amount of tobacco? The American Medical Association, for one, says that is probably the case.
The public health argument around banning smoking has always been that while smokers themselves have a choice whether to smoke, those around them are given little choice whether to be exposed to secondhand smoke. It is always going to be a more compelling argument than protecting smokers from themselves. I’m not a big fan of excessive government regulation and I do think smokers have paid the freight on this particular issue for a while now, from social pressures to higher taxes. But ultimately, the role of the government is to represent what the majority of Americans support, so as long as reflects that outlook, it’s hard to argue against.
Dec 29
JeremySociety and Culture Chanukah, Christmas, holidays, Kwanzaa, Yule
For most of us, the month of December is a non-stop, dizzying ride of celebrations and associated travel, gift-giving, greeting card-sending, and all the like. Rarely do we stop and take a moment to think about what we are celebrating, though. Instead, we rush from one to the next and eventually hope that we’ll come up with some excuse to skip the next celebration just so that we have a few minutes to sit down and wrap the gifts. This year, I decided to sit down and meditate a bit on just why we do celebrate this time of year.
Most of the celebrations in December revolve around some religious holiday, whether we’re talking Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Yule, or whatever other celebration of light you honor. But you know what? These holidays provide us with an excuse for celebrating, not a reason. I know very few people who give the spiritual aspects of these holidays more than cursory notice. For example, if you’re Christian, how much time did you spend in the last week contemplating the fact that Jesus was basically a pretty awesome guy who wanted people to be good to each other? I think you probably spent more time figuring out where you could get that last gift that eluded your shopping efforts.
That leaves us with the celebrations themselves, the excuses to be social. As much as the all the parties and lunches and Yankee swaps may drive us to distraction, they fulfill a very basic need in all of us: the craving for social contact. Built around the excuse of “the holidays,” we’re suddenly willing to accept a hectic social schedule that any other time of the year would be laughable. The reason for this is because we know we have to be with other people this time of year. In fact, we recognize this as an expectation, but rarely remember that the expectation built from an original desire.
But why now, why December? Well, let’s see. It’s damn dark outside. Even our pre-electrical ancestors must have wanted an excuse to light an extra candle or two now and then. The crops were all gathered in and some of them were probably pondering going bad, meaning it’s an ideal time for that big party that eats it up before we had to throw it out. Something like that becomes tradition because we enjoy it.
It’s too bad that we’ve forgotten how much we once enjoyed those gatherings. Instead, we tend to focus on the headaches of planning them, or travelling to them, or “I can’t believe I have to see that jerk, even if it’s only once a year.” We take for granted all the people with whom we value contact, even if it’s only now and then. We take for granted all the effort we and others expend into creating elaborate meals and finding just the right gift.
My Christmas was a little different this year. I went to series of very small gatherings that allowed me to just focus on the people. On Christmas Day, I had a quiet day with my mother, stepfather, and grandmother. We shared a dinner that was simple and delicious. We opened a box of gifts shipped from my sister, which consisted mostly of a homemade photo album for each of us, along with a group gift intended to remind us of my grandfather. This is what made me stop and reflect.
The holidays really are a time to celebrate. They give us the opportunity to celebrate each other. The why is all about being together and the why now is more like why not now. As goofy as it sounds, being together is something we all need and something we all need to be reminded of, whether we like it or not. No matter how much we may complain, we know deep down that there is a purpose: to appreciate those around us and know that we are not alone.
Dec 26
AndrewSociety and Culture Christmas, Holiday, Shopping
So the deal mania has begun. Returns Friday is here and early bird deals were starting around 6am today. The stores, complaining about the lack of consumer spirit this holiday, are literally doing anything in their power to get you, the shopper, back into their store one more time before the end of the year.
In a way, our dumpster diving mentality for shopping deals has plunged to an all-time, unspectacular bottom. As stores get more creative, er, desperate, for business, they are willfully ignoring their own store manuals and making all sorts of hasty new policies, like refunding you on the price difference between what you paid months ago and what the cost is now on the same item. They are throwing coupons and discounts at customers like ninja stars, hoping to hit as many people as possible in a wide slaughter. Stores are extending hours, open until midnight one night, open at six am the next day. And customers are becoming inhuman monsters, anything for a deal, dickering on a price, returning items just to buy them again for a few bucks cheaper, crowding the stores and pushing past people to grab that bargain before it’s gone.
A new world order has erupted as the economy tanks and unemployment rises and people are upside down on their homes and their cars and credit card debt is on the rise. The landscape has empowered consumers to find the best deals, and stores to stretch their resources trying desperately to get people to shop. And as far as I can tell, nobody benefits.
If nothing else is clear about the current environment of consumerism, it’s that most of us haven’t learned our lesson. If you couldn’t afford it before, there’s a pretty good chance you still can’t afford it now, whether it’s 10% cheaper, 50% cheaper or 60% off of the retail price. So let me ask you, you have less money than before, you have to stretch it further (except for gas, just about every necessity comes at a higher cost this year) and you’re going out of your way to buy a stack of gifts just to have something to open on Christmas Day?
There is a notion this time of year that Christmas gifts (or Hannukah gifts, if you will) are the vital harbinger of good cheer. That perpetuating the tradition of gift-giving is essential to embracing the holiday spirit and fighting the downer of our current economic climate (stores love to encourage this). That somehow, if you don’t rush out on Christmas Eve and finish your Christmas shopping, the crush of negative energy that results from such unfinished business will wipe out good will until the end of 2009 when you get a chance at redemption. Bullshit.
On the news on Christmas Eve was a nugget of a story about how people who still need gifts are literally left shopping at the twenty-four hour drug store. One woman being interviewed was positively aglow with the books, toys and novelty items she could buy at CVS. Really? First, you didn’t shop all year, and now, an hour before Santa comes down the chimney, you’re rushing to the drug store to stock up on nail polish, snowglobes and Tylenol for your family?
The point of gifts should never be about fulfilling some ridiculous obligation that represents holiday tradition. You give gifts to express how important the person receiving them is to you. That lesson is even more vital during these hard times than ever before. Not only should you not be spending the money yourself if finances are tight, but to encourage someone else to spend money on you when they cannot afford to, that is simply criminal. Especially in the name of holiday spirit.
There are other ways to embrace the holiday cheer than just spending on money on a stack of gifts to go under the tree. You can downsize gifts, which many people have done with Yankee swaps and Secret Santa exchanges. You can spend time among family and friends hosting a nice holiday potluck, which is as good for holiday spirit as any gift. You can make crafts. Sure, a handmade gift isn’t a new 16GB iPod Touch. But more than ever, we seem to have forgotten it is the thought that counts.
Because we willfully discarded any sense of fiscal responsibility this season in the name of a sale, a new world order has developed in holiday shoppers. The new bully culture among consumers is deeply disturbing. Retailers should be disturbed. Not only are stores ignoring basic business sense in order to make sales by extending hours and deeply discounting items, they face the scary reality that the bully culture isn’t going to blow over just because it’s no longer Christmas. This mentality is here to stay.
But consumers should be disturbed too. Because in the wake of a disastrous year where few people escaped unscathed, the most apparent thing about this holiday season is that things have changed for the worse. Stop looking for the best bargain on stuff you don’t need and can’t afford, and start creating new traditions for the holidays, ones that promote the same joy and good spirit that reside within us, not inside a box packaged in wrapping paper.
Dec 18
AndrewSociety and Culture Grammar, Punctuation
Question: What’s the big deal about an Oxford comma?
Answer: An Oxford comma is the third comma in a sequence of three items. I went to the grocery store to buy an apple, an orange, and a banana. The last comma in the sequence (before the conjunction “and”) is the Oxford comma. Whether you use it depends on which style guide you follow. Publication houses typically use one style guide to make sure their publications have a consistent look. But for most of us, unless you are writing a research paper or a paper for class, you probably don’t follow a style guide and likely just do whatever it is you learned to do when you were a high school student.
Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (a popular one for college classes) uses the Oxford comma, though ironically, the University of Oxford Writing and Style Guide does not. In the latter case, a serial comma is only recommended when it helps clarify ambiguity in the sentence.
Bet that cleared it up?
So the bottom line is the Oxford comma is optional.
Dec 16
AndrewSociety and Culture Happy
A number of studies out there have attempted to measure the spread of happiness. The thought behind the research is whether or not being around happy people can increase our chances of being happy ourselves. (The null hypothesis is then what? Happiness isn’t contagious?) And the studies measured how many degrees of separation we can go to help ourselves out.
Among the conclusions is that our friend’s friend’s happiness could impact us positively. And interestingly, unhappiness is a lot harder to spread between people than happiness itself. (Though if you ask me, a lot harder to shake off as well). Though ask yourself, how long do you have to be continuously happy for it to count as happiness?
Still, the research concluded that surrounding ourselves with happy people is the surefire way to catch the bug. The more the merrier. I like the idea, but I can’t help think that happiness is such a generic term for describing a state of being. This is not just a case of semantics because research by its nature has to the define the very thing it is trying to measure. You can’t call it contentment when it’s happy. Otherwise, your results are flimsy at best.
Look at it from the reverse. I look at my friends and I see a lot of anxiety. One of my friends is having his first child in May. There’s a lot of worry around the child and mother’s health (now and later) and the costs of bringing a third person into their household. And those kind of worries linger. Another friend is worried about layoffs at work. Until the economy rebounds and the threats from senior management abate, that will be an enormous on-going stressor. Another is piled high with bills, legitimate and unavoidable, and looking for an end to the unexpected expenses.
So where is the line between anxiety and stress and being unhappy? Of course it’s different for everyone. But there’s an manifest correlation there. Sure, it might be a lot harder to catch unhappiness, but we live in a world that is naturally stressful. It almost seems like stressors are inevitable, particularly with our national climate as it is now, so knowing where the line is becomes more than an academic concern. When does cumulative stress make one unhappy camper?
We need to work together to spread happiness. This isn’t a motivational speech. It’s the logical conclusion that if six degrees of happiness can affect our own well-being, then not only do we need to surround ourselves with happy people, we need to recognize our own power to influence the model.
But how long do you have to be happy to consider yourself a happy person? It is a state of averages? Well, I’m happy this percentage of my day, therefore that makes me a happy person?
I’ll tell you something that I only recently recognized within myself. I’m happiest when I am living in the moment. Whether I have my headset on my ears and I’m listening to music, or hanging out with my friends, watching TV and not thinking about work or laundry or responsibility. It happens when I’m writing, and I get deeply into the tick tick tick of my fingers sweeping across the keys.
As soon as I start thinking about tomorrow, the spell is broken. It’s inevitable I suppose. But if I want to spread happiness far and wide, I feel like it has to start within me. Sure, I can make friends who are friends with people who are happy, and hope I catch it by serendipity, but why not be the spark instead of the tinder? (Actually, I guess in this analogy, I would be the log, now wouldn’t I?)
This isn’t just an argument for escapism, or drugs or booze because that defeats the point. Regardless of how happy we are (or not), we still have to live our lives. When those things supersede the day to day and become the quality of life, can we really call ourselves happy? The friends who I see as being happy have found a genuine balance between being responsible adults and letting it all go once in a while. They find a way to shut out the negative stressors and live in the moment when work and money and other concerns don’t matter at that time.
We could, of course, look up the research prospectus on the study of happiness and find out exactly how it is defined by the researchers. But we don’t need someone’s research project to prove what we already know to be true. We need to surround ourselves with people who are like the way we want to be. And short of that, happiness starts within us.
Dec 11
AndrewBusiness, Society and Culture admissions, applying for college, College
Question: What is an admissions hook?
Answer: It is an unwritten rule that some spots in the next class of first year students is saved for students with what is known in admissions lingo as “a hook.” Most colleges would rather not make a big deal about it because they want to encourage you to apply (even if only to turn you away.) Many students with a hook are admitted under different criteria than the average applicant. So the college will judge their application separately, and by definition more favorably, from the pool of mostly everybody else.
If it all sounds a little too distasteful for you, consider that preferential treatment of certain applicants is not really that big a deal. The colleges make it into something sinister by pretending that all applicants are created equal. Instead of denying that some applicants have a better chance of being accepted, they should be honest about it.
Why don’t colleges admit it? Well, some might if you ask. But the truth is colleges feed off the competition for acceptance letters, particularly elite institutions. Colleges that want to be perceived as selective need to have a high number of applications so that the number of students who are rejected is high. And that’s because, for the most part, incoming first year classes are the same size from year to year. So the only way to seem selective is to send out more rejection letters.
Who Has the Hook?
Recruited athletes.
Children of alumni.
Children of donors.
How much of an advantage being in one of these categories depends on the school. Some college actively recruit athletes. Other college actively recruit children of alumni. In many cases, these special applicants are accepted outside the normal admissions process. And that means they are not judged by the same criteria that you are.
Generally speaking, having a hook means you get special attention during the admissions process. Without a hook, you are simply grouped with many of the other applicants who have no special connection to the college. It means your chances of getting may be less because there are more applicants to compete with for admissions in the general group.
Unfair or Unfortunate?
Is the system of preference unfair or is it unfortunate? Actually, it is neither. Even though colleges strive to treat everyone fairly in the admissions process, the fact is your application is judged on subjective criteria. An admissions counselor reads and judges your essay (often in less than two minutes.) You are evaluated partially on the admissions interview, and even how many times you visited campus before you applied. All of these things factor in to your application. Having a hook does give you special consideration, but there are many other factors that make your application more or less appealing. And in fact, one of the easiest ways to get special consideration is to genuinely show your interest in the college. Maybe that means applying early decision or early action. Maybe that means visiting the campus and scheduling an interview with an admissions counselor during your visit.
More than anything, your interest in a school pays off when the acceptance letters go out. So don’t worry about who has the hook and who doesn’t, just use whatever means you have available to sell yourself and you will stand out in the crowd.
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