Opinion

American culture is a toddler who has just made the transition from training wheels to big kid bike, accelerating like never before, redefining speed. Except we can’t feel the wind running through our hair as we move forward. And unlike the undeveloped nations of the world, nature is not a big player in the way we define our culture. Take the tribal areas of New Guinea for instance, who live directly in accordance with their surrounding terrain. They’ve learned the forest like a roadmap and know exactly how to handle themselves in the various calls of the wild. If the world suddenly reverted to how it was 250 years ago (into the far more natural state before mass production), it would be these societies that would fare best. Likewise, if all industry were suddenly to shut down and wilderness were to grow over our machines, we would have to completely readapt for new sources of dependency and very few of us would be able to survive.

It wasn’t until the tail end of 12th grade that we realized how little our actions mattered. I’d already been accepted to Davis, and nothing outside of my getting arrested for treason was going to dissuade the campus from assimilating me. Cal Poly and Santa Cruz had similar designs on my buddies, leaving us coasting through our last classes – an impressive feat of laziness considering how ably we’d underperformed even beforehand. Once we’d impressed our revelations on our less scholastically-inclined friends, we were home free. To get a mental image, picture the Almighty reaching down and handing us a celestial get-out-of-jail-free card; that’s about what it felt like.

The city of Davis’ Climate Action Team recently completed an inventory regarding the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. In the study, it was revealed that 225,200 equivalent tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in 1990. If conditions remained constant, the city would produce 313,006 tons of emissions by 2015, according to the study. While the numbers themselves are not encouraging, where the emissions are coming from is actually a positive. According to the CAT inventory, transportation accounted for 57 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Davis in 1990. This number is, in a sense, both promising and discouraging. The fact that over 100,000 tons of emissions were released by transportation alone is certainly an issue, but it’s an issue that we as a community can resolve. Davis’ public transportation system and bicycle-oriented landscape means there’s little need to drive a personal car from place to place. Additional changes to infrastructure could further promote alternative transportation methods and a diminished reliance on personal automobiles.

Elliot Spitzer is an idiot. But not because the former governor of New York paid upwards of $4,000 for two hours of “relaxation therapy” with a 22-year-old failed musician. That makes him a selfish prick. No, Elliot Spitzer is an idiot because he got caught. That said, I don’t think what Mr. Spitzer and Miss Swallows did was inherently wrong. I’ve used a loaded word there: wrong. Right and wrong are brought up in politics far too often for my liking. Rather than evaluate things on their effects, many people simply denote things as right and wrong, entirely disregarding context. But context matters. Is smoking pot right or wrong? Well, is the person in question a doctor on call, a patient on chemotherapy or a kid on a couch with a bag of Funyuns and the complete first season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force? What about paying for sex? Well, is the prostitute safe? Are both people disease free? Does the John have a family? The point is that context determines if an action is good, bad or neutral for those involved. That’s why I don’t buy the whole morality bid; it’s based on the premise that context is irrelevant.

Arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport and armed with the motivation of contributing to Senator Obama’s campaign as a “springtern” – a colloquialism for a spring internship – little did I know what to expect. But experience I did, and it was uncompromising, rewarding and ultimately, eye-opening. Philadelphia is a city that is distinctly heterogeneous. Buildings appear segmented, even aloof, from each other. On the one hand, the neoclassical architecture harks as a reminder of the past, intent on maintaining the memories of patriots pursuing independence. Meanwhile, symbols of the capitalist advance – the leaden, towering skyscrapers – juxtapose these cultural ancients. Coexisting, they both brim and bore, at times seemingly conflicting between a steely desire for progress and a poignant nostalgia to preserve.

“They say times have changed, and they have,” a well-dressed plump woman in her fifties told me. “But some things are still the same.” I listened attentively as I pushed the cart out to her car, and she continued talking with ease, perhaps because she was a regular customer of mine. She explained that she was shopping in produce and thought the cherries looked a bit old, so she asked Vinny, who was working nearby, if there were any newer ones in the back. He said no, but a short time later a second customer asked him the same question, and he said yes, and dutifully went to the back to retrieve them. The second customer was white. Vinny was white. My customer was black. Curious after her explanation, I asked Vinny what the deal was. Very thin and not exactly attractive, Vinny adjusted his glasses 20 years out of style. “I know, she said something to me. I thought we had no cherries in the back when she asked. Then next time I was back there, I see that we did have more. What am I supposed to do, lie to the next customer because she happened to be white?”

Something I’ve come to realize about UC Davis, the public school system and perhaps the whole of American intellectualism is just how much emphasis there is on reason, so much so that I believe that there is an over-emphasis on it. A quick word of caution to all you rationalists out there – stop for a second, take a few breaths into a little brown paper bag and read the rest of this before you decide to somehow reason me into a small poof-cloud of nonexistence. In order for any claim or argument to be accepted by our community, it must first be logically proven or at least sound enough to provide a working foundation to build upon with further claims to knowledge. In many cases, this is rightly so because it’s not wise to take anyone’s word on just anything. In the process of learning, being scrupulous is fundamental. However, I wish to distinguish between learning and discovery.

There’s this picture that sometimes rotates as my desktop background – the shadows of four girls splayed against a nondescript sidewalk somewhere in residential Willow Glen. I’m the one in braids and a skirt raising my hands like claws; my best friend is the hooded figure (this was during her Little Red Riding Hood phase). I guess everyone has a picture like this – one where the faces are not visible, but the memories are. I keep it there because it’s one of the few pictures I have of my friend Krystine where she’s not covering her face (probably because you can’t actually see her face). I keep it because the four of us used to call ourselves Los Banditos and roam the quiet residential streets in bandit masks and plaid skirts. And perhaps there’s some part of me that likes it because there’s a lack of clarity there – the blurred outlines of our 16-year-old knees and elbows serving as the only markers to a specific memory.

Social networking websites such as facebook.com and myspace.com have become a staple of our culture among teens and young adults. With such a plethora of information and multimedia readily available on the Internet, it’s not hard to believe a business owner or employer would use such resources to dig up more information about prospective employees.

The Social Security Administration has recently made revisions to their no-match letter in hopes of overturning a previous injunction that prevents them from using it. The injunction was instated because civil rights groups had protested the letter, which informs employers that an employee’s given social security number does not match their name. The new letter informs employers that a non-matching social security number can mean that the employee is an undocumented immigrant. This revision includes an explanation of this information, which they hope will be satisfactory to repeal the injunction.

I’m probably the lamest role model out there. For one thing, I love settling for mediocrity. All those camp counselors out there are probably thinking, “Well, she’s certainly not going to get anywhere with that attitude,” and they’re probably right, so suck it. I played the violin for 12 years, and all I got out of it was a CMEA medal that I had to buy myself. I also run this column, but I’ve never written anything worthy of a literary magazine or a scholarship. I don’t even understand why, considering I write so good.     My two life mottos are “It could be worse,” and “Good enough is good enough,” both of which have nothing to do with being your best because most of the time, you’re not. There will be someone out there who is smarter, faster, stronger and more gorgeous than you. And they probably have whiter teeth too and donate more money to charity or something.

It’s no secret that things aren’t looking good for California’s public education system. The state currently faces a $16 billion deficit and has found itself scrambling to make the necessary cuts to its already “spread too thin” budget. Unfortunately, budget slashing politicians and administrators are beginning to realize the severity of this problem and have set their sights on California’s public schools in an effort to make ends meet. As a result, thousands of teachers and school employees up and down the state have found themselves in the very unsettling position of not knowing whether their job, or even their school, will still exist next year.