AB 390, introduced to the state legislature on Feb. 23 by Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), would make it legal to use, buy, grow and sell marijuana for recreational use for those over the age of 21.

The proposed bill would tax buyers $50 per ounce of marijuana, a move that would help the state’s economy, in theory, to the tune of over $1 billion annually. This fact makes the bill worthy of consideration.

California’s ailing economy needs all the help it can get. Other stopgap measures that have been mentioned, such as privatizing the state lottery, would provide a one-time payoff. Legalizing marijuana and taxing it accordingly would produce an annual windfall for the state.

Legalization would also reduce costs in other areas. Police and narcotics units would save money by directing their attention elsewhere; the courts would have to deal with thousands fewer cases; and prisons would have room for criminals convicted of more serious charges.

The bill would not do away with illicit marijuana sales; there will always be a black market for products that are tax-free. It would however, raise a great deal of money from legal sales of the drug. Given the financial situation of the state, legislators should be seriously considering any and all forms of relief.

Even considering California’s liberal history, it is unfortunate that AB 390 will probably not pass. Legislators must keep looking for new ideas, however, and this certainly fits the bill (so to speak).

There’s nothing like a visit to the dorms to bring back all those memories of yesteryear. I still remember – it was 2006, and we freshmen thought we were cooler than waterbeds. We were free, dammit, free! So it’s no surprise what kind of shit went down. It was, after all, the result of 60 horny, naïve 18-year-olds cohabitating in rooms that were hardly more spacious than the average walk-in closet.

Those were the days. Some things were staples, like one girl in every dorm who tries to hold her long-distance relationship together but inevitably always ends up sobbing in the hallway on the phone screaming, “I thought you loved me!” the one night you actually make it to bed before sunrise. And the experience of walking in on complete strangers fornicating all over your bed. Or an orgy, whatever.

And then there are the random oddities I experienced, like the stench that took over my entire floor that I later discovered was from a dude who was brewing mead under his bed. The whole year was like a really whacked-out social experiment. And for reasons I’ll never really understand, it was way easier to find Mary Jane than Johnnie Walker. So when we did manage to score some drank, it was like, “Ooh, booze!” The next thing you knew, there were 12 people in your room and everyone was trashed. And everyone wonders why freshmen are borderline alchies. Psh.

The fact remains that we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Making your way through a new sitch like that is like stumbling through the dark, kind of, except that it’s really fun and awesome and there are more ways to humiliate yourself than you ever could have dreamed of. Oh, the possibilities. In any case, here are some things I wish I’d known …

Don’t panic about getting written up. RAs resemble the real world in that some are cool and some suck. They make write-ups seem like a way bigger deal than they actually are, but in reality, getting written up is not that bad. It will not permanently maim your future. You can still become the president of the free world. Lying comes in handy in avoiding write-ups if you’re bored and want to torment the poor souls. Under the alias Marie Rice, I was able to successfully dodge many a write-up. I stopped counting at six. If you lie to your own RA, though, you’re just an idiot.

Looking back on it now, it’s kind of amazing what I got written up for versus what I didn’t get written up for.

Incident A) I was written up for watching “Entourage“ too loudly. Incident B) I came back to the dorms covered in puke and apparently my solution was to just strip down to my skivvies and walk around screaming at some random dude with my friend. Heeey, no write-up! As I was moving out at the end of the year, just for the hell of it I asked my RA if she knew that people had sorta been hotboxing a portion of our floor every night. She said that she did. Whether she was just saving face or she honestly had been cool about it all year, I don’t know, but I’ll give her the props anyway.

If you’re one of those people who dated Chelsea Chastity in high school and want to live the slutty life, this is the year to do it. Not only will your mother not walk in on you (yay!), but you get to live by the new rule that if you don’t remember it, it never happened. Strike before the social ties bind, because if you wait it out you’ll find yourself in hot water for playing naughty Twister with the wrong person and his crazy ex-girlfriend is gonna sic all her sorostitute minions on you. Besides, by the time you graduate, you’ll be able to just laugh about your frisky days. I hope. Just don’t spread the herp, there’s really nothing cool about that.

Beware of the hot tubs in Cuarto. Though we only joke about them swirling with STDs, my friend once found a funky, kinda clearish substance on her stomach post-tub sesh. I will never forget the glare on her face when I said, “Maybe it’s tree sap!” We’ll never be positive, but to this day we’re pretty sure it was, in fact, jizz.

MICHELLE RICK needs to update her list of jizzy hotspots on campus. Help a girlfriend out and hollaback to marick@ucdavis.edu.

A quiet endemic has been spreading around for a while now. It is stealthy yet lasting. It affects every facet of our lives, impacting the way we behave, act, expect and communicate. And the endemic is this: Americans are facing a crisis of identity – we create then deny what we create.

The prominent conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, in an insightful 2006 Sunday Times article, termed this phenomenon “schizophrenia.” For him, the problem with America is that we glorify and elevate certain figures and attitudes, then strangely seek to destroy them. We want but we do not want. And this paradox occurs because it gives meaning to our culture. At its essence, this schizophrenia is necessary as it is polarizing.

This schizophrenia manifests itself in many aspects of our lives. Take our food. We have become, by choice and circumstance, a nation of instant, fast food. We eat what is immediately producible: microwavable ramen, pre-packaged tri-tip steaks, instant spaghetti, Diet Coke. In a life of fast paces, our food has become fast too.

Yet we then react against the unhealthiness of this consumption. Healthy living organizations sprout up, promoting the slow preparation and organization that goes into making meals. Anti-cholesterol supporters crusade in a ferocious quest to eliminate trans-fatty acids from foods, lobbying government officials and advertising their adversaries as vested interests with skewed intentions. There is a real, substantial disdain for the deterioration of our food production and quality as much as consumers love them. And for the consumer, there is a knowable guilt to eating these, yet the behavior persists.

This phenomenon is especially evident in the entertainment industry. We endow our celebrities with the highest possible recognition. They constantly grace the front pages of our magazines and emerge as the subject of late-night talk shows. We ravish and celebrate their beauty, talent and charisma. Celebrities, in our world, are ascended to the highest echelons.

Yet we also bemoan their individual failings. We criticize Gwyneth Paltrow for being underweight, analyze Lindsay Lohan’s romantic tendencies and arguments with her partner, scrutinize Angelina Jolie’s and Jennifer Aniston’s ongoing “feud.” We question the morality of their actions and the sanity of their doings. The conversation then emerges as a battle between tradition and ethics and modernization and liberation. We admire and disdain them simultaneously, without truly being sure what we actually feel about them.

And the entire point is that this schizophrenia is necessary for the collective function of numerous parties and industries. This is a cyclical endeavor that rewards everyone. As Sullivan remarked, commentators critique and lambaste, entertainers receive publicity, media managers get a job, newspaper ratings increase, consumers delight. In this circle, everyone gains a voice, all winning in the game of rise-and-blame. This process demands the participation of a leader, followers, reactionaries, anti-reactionaries. It requires proponents and opponents in equal intensity and measure.

Hence what America crystallizes it seeks to destroy. And this is the paradox: the artificiality and authenticity of each action is true. Both are legitimate and authoritative. There is hypocrisy in one seeking collective approval. Yet there are also true believers, soothsayers who strive for the individual, redeeming qualities.

This schizophrenia is the uncompromising reality and quality that defines postmodern America. And it is necessary to view this entire proceeding from a lens that is detached, removed and far. Because, like always, a schizophrenia is bewildering.

Adhering to the spirit of schizophrenia, ZACH HAN welcomes both your congratulatory messages and demeaning criticisms to zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

Throughout my college career, I have been bombarded by activist groups begging for my support. Most of the time, it’s a perky girl holding a clipboard who runs up to me and explains how the horrors of the world need my minimal contribution.

I usually play along for a bit until I reject the plea – that’s when the guilt kicks in.

I think to myself, “Wow, children are being sold as sex slaves in Thailand? That’s pretty shitty, why didn’t I just give the perky girl five bucks?”

In my optimistic opinion, we all wish to stop the child sex trade. For some reason, however, not everyone (including myself) puts effort toward fighting this injustice. This odd behavior appears to be a moral paradox: We want to make people happier yet we chose not to do anything about it.

If you look at my spending history, you would conclude I would rather give five bucks to a hungry friend than to a charity for starving orphans. I am not a bad person; I just haven’t had the emotional pull to go out of my way to donate.

The more I will be exposed to the woe of starving orphans, the more likely I am to donate. I am no exception to this rule; most activists have a strong emotional attachment to their cause. Famous people who catch some debilitating disease leverage their fame and money toward advocating for a treatment. People who lose a loved one realize they should get closer to their family. People who see Schindler’s List suddenly become more sympathetic toward Jews in the Holocaust.

I find it unsettling that our morality is so closely correlated to how emotional we feel about something. This perspective on morality makes it all sound less virtuous and even ignoble. On the other hand, it sheds light onto how we should start looking at morality.

Acting morally only when emotionally stimulated is not always in line with our moral preferences. Only caring about issues that tug at our hearts or acting in ways that make us merely feel righteous may distract us from doing the right thing.

Steven Pinker opened his article “The Moral Instinct” (for The New York Times) by asking: “Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa or Bill Gates?” Pinker then points out how most people would find Mother Teresa, who’s loved for her charitable work, more admirable than Gates, who’s infamous for the blue screen of death and the dancing paperclip. Gates, however, used his fortune to help a lot more people than Mother Teresa with her primitive medical care. Why does their moral reputation seem out of order?

Pinker’s observation is an example of how people rank moral behaviors by how warm and fuzzy it makes them feel. As a society, I think we’d be better off if our moral acts are chosen by how many lives they save or how much suffering they alleviate, not by how they make us feel. Our emotions are not reliable measurements for how effective a moral act is. They could have been reliable back in the hunter-gatherer days, but modern society has a completely different environment.

Back in the day, 30 to 50 would be a typical size for a cohesive hunter-gatherer band. Our minds haven’t evolved a mechanism that intensifies our grief for deaths greater than the typical size of a hunter-gatherer band. We simply don’t have the neurotransmitters to multiply the grief felt for 10 million deaths to 2 million deaths. When trying to decide which policies we need to administer in order to deter global warming or end poverty, these figures are significant. Bed nets and emission taxes may not make us feel warm and fuzzy, but they may be the right thing to do.

Morality based on emotions also blinds us from things we may care about, but don’t realize yet. One hundred and fifty years ago, we had to convince people that they cared about black slaves – we couldn’t just tell them it was wrong.

In fact, there are many moral issues we care about now, but ignore because we aren’t emotionally motivated. Here are some issues I think we’ve been ignoring: future people having to deal with our problems, abuse of prisoners and the morality of eating animals.

In summary, we should all be more moral, but let’s not be emo about it.

LIOR GOTESMAN wants to know what other moral issues you think we’ve been ignoring. Tell him at liorgott@gmail.com.

Not to sound super emo or anything, but I feel as if I’m in a particularly sensitive junction in my life.

With barely two weeks away from my very last quarter at this lovely university and a job market more depressing (but significantly less entertaining) than the latest entry on fmylife.com, I’m especially prone to bouts of nostalgia and a longing for the innocent days of yesteryear and so on and so forth.

Still, even though I’m at the technical prime of my life as a 21-year-old college student and am supposed to be “livin‘ it up“ or something to that effect, there are times when I can’t help but want to skip the whole coming-of-age part of maturation.

If television is indicative of anything, sitcoms have told me that life after college looks something like this: a couple of years as a struggling but carefree 20-something to an up-and-coming professional in my thirties to a polished, high-power businesswoman in my forties.

Nope, sometimes I’d rather just skip the generic post-college lifestyle and just go straight to my golden years.

Really, though, there are lots that old age has to offer. Retirement benefits and early bird specials are just the beginnings of a lengthy list of golden opportunities I plan to take advantage of once I hit the hella hip retirement scene – because what good would old age be if you can’t benefit from all the wisdom earned and experiences experienced?

Here’s the secret: Old age can stand as a valid excuse for nearly anything.

Once I’m of age, I can finally indulge in any eccentric behavior that right now would probably be received with an emphatic “awkward!” by my youthful peers.

For one thing, there’re my pack rat tendencies, something I’ve learned from my own grandparents. Unfortunately, while other kids my age have things they’ve inherited from their Genghis and Pop-Pops like vintage purses or heirloom jewelry, my own kinfolk have a cache of invaluable items such as every microwave they’ve ever owned, regardless of ability to function.

But with a good number of decades under my belt, I could attribute my inability to throw anything away as a move of sentimentality. The same things that could be called a “shitload of rubbish“ would be regarded as precious relics amassed from years of life lived. I figure that this could also benefit my sartorial sensibilities – if I were to keep my clothes now, I could totally fit in with the thrift-shopping, vintage-hunting hipsters once I hit the grandma years, even if the irony becomes lost on my little old lady self.

Additionally, many young adults use alcohol as an excuse to make stupid, truthful and inevitably regrettable statements in the form of drunken confessions, phone calls and text messages.

But when you’re old, you can blame everything you say on borderline senility. Better yet, you can make your grandkids apologize for you.

To be truthful, the past three and a half years spent raging on the weekends and the occasional weekday has finally caught up to me. Getting all dolled up for a night out on the town (and by “town,“ I probably mean sweaty house party) used to be fun. Now, getting ready has become a laborious chore, with my roommates and I recruiting one another to do each other’s hair and makeup. In addition, my endurance for the actual activity of going out has decreased plenty, as I’ve had to “spruce up“ hard liquor with energy drinks as late nights get increasingly earlier and full-day recoveries become more frequent.

RACHEL FILIPINAS loves fmylife.com, but sometimes she wishes they weren’t anonymous so she can picture who she’s laughing at. Send your own stories to rmfilipinas@ucdavis.edu.