My private property trumps your freedom of speech

Last night as I was leaving the library on Northeastern's campus I noticed a large chalk drawing on the granite landing outside. Now, chalking isn't unusual on campus. In fact, it's usually one of the cheapest and easiest ways for campus groups to advertise an event. This chalking was different though.

In large letters it read OBAMA HILLARY with the communist symbol in the middle.
I almost took a picture because I thought it was odd and interesting. But since it was almost 11:30 and cold, I wanted to get to the train as fast as possible.

I'm mad now that I didn't take a picture. I arrived on campus this morning at about 10 am to find several Northeastern maintenance employees washing the bricks in Krentzman quad. There was a puddle of blue chalk forming below the hose.

My immediate assumption was confirmed later when I got to the library to find a puddle in place of the chalking last night.

So my question is why did Northeastern find whatever the chalking meant to be so offensive that it needed to be washed away before most kids crossed campus this morning. What did the other chalkings say besides the one outside the library? If you know, please leave a comment.

12:27pm Update: Apparently chalking was done by "freshmen college republicans." It is a priviledge on campus, which makes total sense since it's private property. Northeastern retains the right to get rid of anything they deem not okay, especially if you didn't get permission. NEU's publicity rules.

Election Coverage: brought to you by citizen journalism!

Made all the better because I can spite all the old-school newsies in my journalism capstone on Thursday.

A Story of Humanity & Compassion Despite Political Differences

After I voted I walked out to the street to find my mother's friends surrounding our new friend Mike - they were laughing and having a great time. I joined them and soon learned that Mike had changed his mind in the polling booth and ended up voting for Obama. When I asked him why he changed his mind at the last minute, he explained that while he was waiting for his jacket he got into a conversation with one of the ladies who had explained how the Jewish community, and she, had worked side by side with the black community during the civil rights movements of the 60's, and that this vote was the culmination of those personal and community efforts so many years ago. That this election for her was more than just a vote...but a chance at history.

Read the whole story here at Running a Hospital.

Altruism in America

Excerpts from an article by David Graeber in Harper's (Jan 2007):

Imagine, for a moment, that the United States as it exists today were the creation of some ingenious social engineer. What assumptions about human nature could we say this engineer must have been working with? Certainly nothing like rational choice theory. For clearly our social engineer understands that the only way to convince human beings to enter into the world of work and the marketplace (that is, of mind-numbing labor and cutthroat competition) is to dangle the prospect of thereby being able to lavish money on one’s children, buy drinks for one’s friends, and, if one hits the jackpot, spend the rest of one’s life endowing museums and providing AIDS medications to impoverished countries in Africa. Our theorists are constantly trying to strip away the veil of appearances and show how all such apparently selfless gestures really mask mine kind of self-interested strategy, but in reality American society is better conceived as a battle over access to the right to behave altruistically. Selflessness–or, at least, the right to engage in high-minded activity–is not the strategy. It is the prize.

When we are dealing not with strangers but with friends, relatives, or enemies, a much more complicated set of motivations will generally come into play: envy, solidarity, pride, self-destructive grief, loyalty, romantic obsession, resentment, spite, shame, conviviality, the anticipation of shared enjoyment, the desire to show up a rival, and so on, These are the motivations impelling the major dramas of our lives that great novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky immortalize but that social theorists, for some reason, tend to ignore.

...we are so used to operating inside impersonal markets that it never occurs to us to think how we would act if we had an economic system in which we treated people based on how we actually felt about them.

One might put it this way: if value is simply what one considers important, then money allows importance to take a liquid form, by enabling us to compare precise quantities of importance and trade one off for the other. If someone does accumulate a very large amount of money, the first thing he or she is likely to do is to try to convert it into something unique, whether it be Monet’s water lilies, a prizewinning racehorse, or an endowed chair at a university.

The problem, of course, is that a higher education system cannot be expanded forever. At a certain point one ends up with a significant portion of the population unable to find work even remotely in line with their qualifications, who have every reason to be angry about their situation, and who also have access to the entire history of radical thought.

More thoughts on this later.

Oh, you didn't know that muffin was bad for you?

MSNBC article about New Yorkers' reaction to the new laws the city finally got passed that requires fast-food type restaurants to display calorie content of food as prominently as the price.

Outside the Forest Hills’ Dunkin’ Donuts, Juan Restrepo, the 45-year-old owner of a construction company, said he was quitting corn muffins — 510 calories! — this time for good.

“My daughter warned me about them,” he lamented. “I just didn’t listen.”

Just proves the point that we don't believe it until we see it. So maybe seeing it over and over and over again will finally drill home how we managed to become to the fattest country on the planet. Changing our habits will change companies menu items (ah, capitalist supply & demand cycle) which means more healthy options for everyone - yay!

New York is not the only city pushing calorie labels. New laws in Seattle and California’s Santa Clara and San Francisco are scheduled to go into effect later this year, including some more stringent than New York’s, requiring restaurants to post information about sodium, carbs, fats and cholesterol in addition to calories.

Hey Boston - where are we? I want calorie counts on my menus!

I actually wrote my Law, Policy, and Society thesis about this topic in December. Here's some really fun facts:

* Only 35% of Americans are healthy (according to BMIs)
* After the Nutrition and Labeling Education Act 1990 (you know, all those lovely labels on the stuff you buy at the grocery store): 48% changed their decision to buy or use a product and 24% to 37% choose high calorie items less often
* New York City residents at Subway restaurants who reported seeing calorie information bought 48 fewer calories on average and those who claimed they actively used the information bought 92 few calories. “The Health Department estimates that, if the same pattern held at every restaurant covered by the proposed regulation, its adoption would spare at least 150,000 people from obesity over the next five years, preventing more than 30,000 cases of diabetes” (NYBOH PR). If we use US Census Bureau information to estimated the population of New York City to be 3% of the national population, these statistics become even more significant. Federal adoption of the MEAL Act would then spare an estimated five million people from obesity in the next five years and prevent one million cases of diabetes.

(Let me know if you'd like to read a full copy.)

The revolution will be televised, blogged, and podcast

Obama - Change I hope to believe in
Politics absolutely blow my mind sometimes. Obama has been crowned the Dem's nominee finally after a long, hard, and bitter road through primary season. At the time of my primary in New Hampshire, way back when, I voted for Edwards because his policies aligned most closely with what I feel are right. (One of the best websites for objective comparison: The Pew Forum for Religion & Politics.)And, partly I see now, because I didn't want to have to choose between the first black nominee and the first woman nominee for the big seat in this country. As the battle raged on, I found myself irritated with HRC for failing somehow - failing to be the WOMAN candidate, failing to capitalize on what many saw to be her greatest weakness. So now that the party's decision has been made, and even though I'm registered independent, I'm going to learn as much about Obama as I can and pray to god in November we make history.

Listening to his speech after the last primaries, I can't help but feel what most of his supporters have felt all along - that slight twinge of hope. Maybe? Maybe this candidate will do what he says he can, or at least he'll try, maybe he can save our country from being the ridiculed, petulant teenager of the world. We'll see what happens in the months to come.

Michael Michalko - Creative Negotiation
Interesting read about 2 people, 3 coins, and the way we negotiate power, assets, and position with each other. Reminds me of the mother who has one kid cut the peanut butter sandwich in two and then lets the other kid choose which side he wants. Cut unfairly and you're likely to get screwed, so you're better off being fair out of the gate. And who knows, maybe one day you're brother will give you the whole damn thing in exchange for your extra cookie.

New Math
And sometimes you just need something silly to make you laugh. Mike, the infinite YouTube master (at least to me), sent me this link last night: Bo Burnham - New Math.