Kathie Jenkins wrote an article entitled “10 cheap eats under $10” in the Thursday, September 27, 2007 edition of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Naturally, the Pioneer Press doesn’t have a version of the article online, and Jenkin’s Pioneer Press-hosted blog only has a teaser for the article, probably due to editorial restrictions. That said, some of the comments at her blog about cheap eats are rather helpful. So, I’ve decided to reproduce her list here, since I’ve been to exactly one of these places and would like to keep them in mind for the future. So, to be clear, what follows is Jenkin’s work, abbreviated here because the Pioneer Press apparently doesn’t want the advertising revenue that could result from carrying old articles. Finally, I’ve eliminated IKEA from the list of places to eat, because my experience there was atrocious. A list of 9, then!
It is absolutely true that Facebooking one’s pictures is akin to posting personal Polaroids on a (searchable, indexed, cross-referenced) community bulletin board in an accessible space. However, no matter how public the incriminating evidence is, schools should have absolutely positively zero power to punish for actions taking place off of their premises.
Best comment from the Slashdot discussion involves the US drinking age:
21? What country is this? Iran?
Surely you’re not telling me the legal drinking age in the US is 21? Hell.. I the worst hangover of my life was the day of my 16th birthday when I could finally drink legally (everyone in this country drinks illegally from about 14). The second worst hangover was at the school party that year where they’d thoughtfully provided free drinks..
You’ll never learn to drink responsibly unless you’ve drunk irresponsibly a few times when you’re younger. OTOH I was drinking wine with meals at 7 years old, so was kinda used to it by then.”
The thrill of the forbidden exacerbates our youth’s problem with drinking. Though slightly tangential, it’s still helpful to bring up the forbidden toy study. This psychological experiment has shown that the harsher the punishment for an enjoyable activity, the stronger the draw to that activity when repercussions are removed. For example, the US defines adults as 18 years of age, yet punishes them severely for choosing to consume alcohol under the age of 21. When most legal repercussions are removed at 21, psychology reveals that there is a stronger draw to the formally forbidden activity of drinking.
While an interesting venture into the intersection between sociology and psychology, railing against America’s high drinking age won’t get us anywhere in this debate. Let’s start with a quote from the Star Tribune article:
“Everyone thinks it’s pretty weird,” [Kalaidis] said. “I think it’s a huge invasion of privacy.”
No. It’s not a huge invasion of privacy. Facebook is ostensibly… actually, by definition a public space. Hey kids, you are not posting pictures and sharing stories in a private virtual tree house club — Facebook is (I’ll repeat it) a public, searchable, indexed, cross referenced, tagged, linked, advertised, popular public space. This definition precludes student’s delusions about privacy. As far as I’m concerned, the Eden Prairie school district can troll Facebook all day long looking for pictures depicting underage drinking parties. What they can not do, and what infuriates me, is twofold:
Accept photographs as incontrovertible records of events.
Expand the scope of disciplinary action beyond school grounds to the surrounding community.
In this digital age of photo manipulation, you can just as easily insert a beer can as a gun into the hand of a person in a picture. What would a school, misled into unjust punishment while reacting to photo manipulation, say? And as for those students who signed “I will not drink” pledges for athletics and scholarships, the questionable evidence issue applies again: “prove it,” becomes a completely acceptable argument. I never drank anything before I was 21, yet I was still at parties in high school where there was underage drinking… and I’d say I was pretty responsible. It’s easy to imagine how the entire situation could get out of control in a hurry, with false accusations, overreactions, and the accompanying hysteria that can infect the small town atmosphere of a high school.
Finally, my second point about jurisdiction of the school should be mind-numbingly obvious. The famous high school cases that have gone to the Supreme Court are all about issues of discipline and control on school grounds. There’s Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District about going to school wearing black armbands in protest of war, Goss v. Lopez about due process in suspensions, and Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier about administration’s right to edit school-sponsored student newspapers.
But you see, all of these cases were rooted in events which took place on school grounds. I can’t find a Supreme Court ruling about high schools punishing students for actions taken outside of schools (which sets me up for the logical fallacy of appealing to ignorance — but I’m having trouble locating the resources to search for the appropriate court cases). Perhaps the lack of these court cases is because the following is abundantly obvious: when students are off of school property, their actions are patrolled, supervised, and regulated by many authorities, but the school is not one of them.
Well, this is about the best quasi-scientific explanation I’ve read that makes the fact I enjoy oatmeal make any sort of sense at all:
In our modern, energy-rich environment, supertasting may be cardioprotective, due to decreased liking and intake of fat, but may increase cancer risk via decreased vegetable intake. It may be a cause of picky eating, but picky eaters are not necessarily supertasters, and vice versa.
I love love love sugar (but not pure sugar things)… so, doughnuts = yes! oatmeal with sugar = yes! but pop = not really and chocolate = yes! So, I think a bite of fatty chocolate goes further for me in terms of the taste experience than it does for other, less tasty tasters. Maybe. (Also, oh heavens, I just said ‘taste experience’… perhaps mouthfeel would be better). All that said, I don’t know if I’m even a super taster at all.
This post sponsored by the letter “I” for “ignorance!”
I love the part in Tina Fey’s American Express commercial where the assistant answers the phone and says “your daughter says it’s octopus time” followed by a screeching taxi, and then Tina going “blaallalalala” with a stuffed octopus. And 30 Rock is very funny.
It is difficult to describe to you the awesomeness that is encompassed by a series of posts over at The Sneeze blog: the intrepid author goes on a hilarious journey of his father’s artistic endeavors. From the introduction, you know it’s going to be good:
The awesome beauty of cakes decorated by my dad is that they inevitably contain drawings that are either incomprehensible or have NOTHING to do with my life. He’s adorable. They’re like random, edible cave paintings.
So, yes, read the story. It was all I could do to keep my laugher from spilling out of my cube into the surrounding area. Keep reading all three posts, especially to experience awesome conclusion. Made my Monday morning bearable, which is saying something.
UPDATE: Ok, having thought about this for a little while, I’m going to go out and say it: that was the best blog post of 2007 (that I read). The ideology of The Sneeze — always generating your own content, keeping it personal, etc. — are exactly what I aspire towards in a personal blog. Given that we’ve been evolving here at tumbledry for only about 8 years, I think there’s still time to hit that stride of combining humor, honesty, and experiences together into a delicious record of the times of one’s life.
A man in New York tosses a paper airplane out of his window, and a home video follows its 55 second flight. Reminds me a bit of that part of American Beauty where Wes Bentley’s character Ricky films the loops and eddies of a plastic bag in the wind.
So why October 5? Just a random date? Perhaps, but Anybirthday has a theory: To be born on this date, a baby would most likely have been conceived on New Year’s Eve.
The survey also found May 22 to be the least common birthday. As yet, no guesses as to what it is that happens in late August (nine months prior to that date) that routinely turns so many people off. Perhaps it’s just too darn hot?
Apparently, my birthday is the least common birthday. A new theme for my subsequent birthday celebration… “Happy Birthday to Alex and 4 other people.”
Very few folks are getting enough sleep, that’s certainly clear. There are different ways to cope with chronic tiredness, though the time pressure in most jobs (anything from studenthood to parenthood to careerhood) is rather intense. It’s interesting to see how the Japanese culture has adapted:
Napping at work isn’t acceptable in the UK, but in Japan dozing anywhere from Parliament to business meetings is allowed. It’s called inemuri, which literally means “to be asleep while present”.
The custom is partly a result of how commitment to a job is judged in Japan, says Dr Brigitte Steger. Inemuri is viewed as exhaustion from working hard and sacrificing sleep at night. Many people fake it to look committed to their job.
It’s a concept that seems bizarre in the UK but the Japanese are the ones who’ve got it right, says Dr Stanley.
“The Japanese are right in their assessment that you work better after a nap than before it. There’s a degree of machismo about it, you’re saying look how hard I’ve worked. But that’s better than the macho rituals we have over here, like how late you can send a work email to prove how long you’ve been working.”
Strict rules apply to inemuri. These include who is allowed to do it - only those high up or low down in a company - and how you do it - remain upright to show you are still socially engaged in some way.
“The rules are written nowhere but everyone knows them, they learn them culturally,” says Dr Steger.
Given the classic siesta, traditionally practiced by those in “China, India, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Malta, The Middle East and North Africa,” you would think that the United States could follow the sleep patterns of other countries and change for the better.