Anti-intellectualism cracks its knuckles and steps out of the shadows

Recently, a local online news source reported that California colleges affirmed their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Along with this, the local JC offered a 2 1/2 hour session this Monday as a "safe space" for students, faculty, staff, and others to gather and discuss their concerns.

This is exactly the role a community college should play. Colleges are places for expanding horizons, learning new things, and discussing different opinions. I think it's great that DVC is offering this. I hope students and others of all backgrounds attend and listen at least.

Then I read the comments on the article above. And on the facebook post of the article.

Most were mean-spirited attacks on the idea of a "safe space."

Liberals, please, quell your fears! You will likely still be able to receive welfare. You will likely still be able to live in your parent’s basements.

Oh goody! A communtiy college cry-in!

OK, now everyone just remember the upside here. These snowflakes, will never be able to hold a job. So the rest of us will be able to get and keep one regardless of their whining.

Bed-wetters and save space kids the election's over if you don't know what the hell happened take a civics class and learn something about how things work in our government if you're confused. ......

I embrace diversity. I frequent Taco Bell and Panda Express.

Ok cupcakes. Dont forget your safety pins

And on and on it went. This is in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the bluest regions of the country. I can't imagine the commentary in deeply red areas. Those who tried to defend the colleges were, of course, attacked for being libtards.

What I saw most among these comments, besides the frequent references to special snowflakes and bedwetting, was an undeniable undercurrent of anti-intellectualism. Aggressive anti-intellectualism. A sense that if you go to college, you're weak and worthless.

This is Trump's America. Where ignorance and whiteness are to be celebrated, and knowledge and diversity are to be ridiculed. Where a white thug with a mohawk and camo pants feels like a success by insulting college kids. I know these white thugs won't show up at the discussion, either to share their feelings or to cause trouble. They're just punks posting shit online. And it's their right to do so.

But this is not the direction America should go. If we don't fight against this surge of white power and anti-intellectualism now, we're going to slip deeper into a dark future.

2006 revisited on the eve of going to college

On Wednesday, our firstborn goes to college for the first time. Huge moment in any parent's life, right? Tonight, our neighbor who is also off to his first year of college came over to catch up for a few minutes.

The boys grew up together, with cowboy Star Wars battles and races around the cul-de-sac and matchbox cars and video nights. But they haven't hung out together in years; in middle school they found separate friends. You know how it is.

But as our neighbor arrived, I remembered that back in 2006 the four boys--this neighbor, another neighbor boy who moved away, and my two kids--put together a time capsule. We didn't bury it, but we did hide it, Indiana Jones-style, in our garage among the tools and boxes of Christmas decorations and other unused things.

Of course I had to have them open it.

Ethan opens the protective plastic bag.

On the front were the names of the boys. The oldest was 11 at the time, and I think Ethan was just nine. Sam was only six, and apparently--according to the note included in the time capsule--he didn't contribute anything to the box because he was "selfish and evil." Later, though (as you can see from the inscription on the box itself), he added a marble.

Sam added the marble later. He wanted credit.

The note details what each boy put in and why. These were their "most treasured possessions," which might be a slight overstatement.

The note, and all the items. Pokemon, pennies, tamigachi, a Sierra Nevada bottlecap (?!?), plastic army men and soldiers... everything dear to a 9 year old boy, I suppose.

I've sealed it back up and put it back in the garage. Some day someone will find it or remember it, and wonder why we bothered to keep it all those years.

It's amazing how kids grow up so quickly. Young men off to college.

My favorite picture of the boys, EVER.

How I thought I got into UC Berkeley but later found I was wrong

More than a quarter century ago, when call waiting was still cutting edge technology, I was a senior in high school on the east coast, and I wanted to go to college far away. I visited my high school guidance counselor and told her I was thinking of computer science.

"Great field," she said. "What colleges are you thinking of?"

"Stanford or UC Berkeley," I said.

"Ha ha ha HA HA HA HAHAHA >snort<," she said.

At this point in the story, you expect me to say I took that as a challenge. That I dedicated myself to proving her wrong. But I'm not a liar, so I won't say that. I basically just went back to whatever I was doing. (But I also picked a sure thing as my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency school. On the off chance she actually was good at her job.)

I applied early admissions to UC Berkeley. I boasted pretty good credentials--over a 4.0 at a good high school, some respectable if not astonishing SAT scores, participation several clubs, varsity letter in four events on the track team. And Berkeley let me in.

For years and years, because of that meeting with my guidance counselor, I thought what really got me into Cal was the essay I submitted with my application.

That is, until I stumbled across it in a box of old papers the other day. And I read it. Now, I can't really tell you what got me in. Luck, probably. Clerical error, maybe. Or maybe they thought I'd make all the other students look good by comparison.

Whatever it was, I don't think it was the essay itself, unless they were impressed by my 24-pin dot matrix printout. They probably saw that and said, "This kid knows computers."

But you be the judge. I give you, at the risk of losing the last tiny bit of respect you might have had for me, the full text. (Typos have likely been introduced during transcription.)

Peter J. Dudley

Everyone says that high school is “the best four years of your life”. I’ve found this to be true. At least, so far it is.

It is interesting that I should be writing this essay now, for I just saw a production of the play “Is There Life After High School?” It dealt with the problems of high school graduates and their memories of their school years.

I like to think of what I may be doing twenty years from now. I like to think that I will be successful and still handsome. I also like to think that I will still like the same things I like today.

One of the things I will always enjoy is traveling. I am among the fortunate few that travel all over the world when they are young. I not only have been around my state, but I have been to North Carolina and all over the southwestern United States. Two of my friends and I are planning to ride our bycicles across the country to California.

Not only have I explored the U.S., but I have also made one short excursion to Mexico, where I used my eight years of Spanish to speak with the other bilingual tourists. I have also been to southeastern Canada. I have also gone to England on a tour with a group of other students during April of 1983. A few years ago, I went with my family to Austria to visit my sister, who was studying at the University in Salzburg. While we were there, I was fortunate enough to ski on two European mountains.

Skiing is one of my favorite pasttimes. Although it may get expensive at times, I still like it more than any other sport. I like the thrill of speeding down a thin trail with the peril of trees all around me. This also gives me a chance to be alone with just a beautiful view and infinite space for my mind to expand.

I also like to hike into the mountains of New Hampshire. I have done this with my brother and my father. Each time we camped overnight under the stars. It is really beautiful country. Besides skiing and hiking, I enjoy other sports.

I have been on the track team for four years. I don’t run much, however—I pole vault. I also like to do the triple jump. I prefer the
technique sports, because they offer me a greater challenge. I like to be challenged. Competition is very important in my life.

I like to compete for things. Competition helps me to try harder at nearly everything. However, some people carry competitiveness to an extreme. All they want to do is win, win, win.

This is not a good attitude. In most things, I compete for fun. If competition gets hostile or causes arguments, I usually will be the first to give in a little. However, in some things which I deem important, I will not slack off in my attempts to win. When I do, it is out of courtesy.

Courtesy is also very important to me. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a “gentleman”. Some extreme people people might call this sexist, but I believe that men should be courteous to ladies. This includes holding doors, taking coats, and other actions of chivalry.

Some people are offended by this conduct, but more people enjoy it. It is a good way to meet people or make new friends.

Making new friends seems to be the theme of my senior year. I have become much more social, even with people I rarely talked to before this year. I also have joined many new clubs, including Spanish club, American Field Services, International Relations, and As Schools Match Wits. I used to be very shy, but now I am learning to be more forward. But, given time, I can easily make friends. Some of my good friends say i should be a politician because of my skill in diplomacy and making friends.

My skill with words is reflected in my poetry. I am fairly good with writing creative poetry. I also like to write creative prose, but I am not as talented wit that as I am with poetry. I mostly like to write science fiction or adventure stories. My biggest problem is that I don’t have enough time to write long stories. Time is one luxury I would love to have more of.

I usually type instead of write my stories, because I can type faster than write. I also use my word processor on my Apple ][+ computer. I also like to program my computer. I have a fluent knowledge of BASIC, and I know a little PASCAL. When I have some extra time, I either try to teach myself PASCAL or just play games. I like the fast-moving games as well as the strategy games. After all, who doesn’t?

While I play these games, I like to listen to my tapes. My favorite music includes the groups Adam Ant, Queen, and the Stray Cats. Music plays a great role in my life. I also like “Rockabilly” music. I mostly like fast music because I like to dance.

When I’m not dancing, writing, or making new friends, I like to relax. Sometimes while I’m watching television, I like to analyze the commercials and look at the advertising techniques. I also like to look at politicians like this.

During the recent election, I liked to watch the candidates over a long period of time and see if they changed at all. I also liked to watch the way they spoke to the public. “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’” This is what politics means to me.

Whatever I happen to be doing, I also happen to be having a good time. There is almost nothing that can’t be made fun. Even so, I always look forward to doing something else, for I can rarely keep in one place. I like to be doing something all the time, even if it is just daydreaming.

I daydream quite a bit. I fantasize about being successful in everything I do. Sometimes I wish that I was a world class skier. Other times I think of all the things I could do with large sums of money. These fantasies provide an escape from the everyday grind that we all must go through.

Other forms of escape I use are fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. I like to tak eon another character and be that character once in a while. It’s a sort of “alter ego”. It’s strange how most of my characters are crafty, clever, intelligent people who like to get into trouble. I guess I like to play myself—all except the “get into trouble” part. I try to avoid trouble at all times.

I do this because there is really no one hovering over me protecting me. I have no real “safety net” if I should fall. My mother lives in Las Vegas, and my father and my stepmother have just moved to San Diego. I stayed in Glastonbury to finish my senior year among my friends and classmates. Over the past three months, I have developed a strong sense of independence. Occasionally my father sends me some money for necessary things such as education and doctor’s fees. However, I have been working and spending my own money on frivolous pleasures such as lunch and clothing.

I am living with my step-grandmother, but she is very active and rarely home. Much of my time is spent out with my friends. During vacations, my college friends come home, and I spend much of my time with them. Sometimes we discuss what we’ve been doing and what we would like to do in the future.

My goals in life all seem to point to the ancient Greek “Golden Mean”. I would like, as I suspect most people would, to be my best physically, intellectually, and emotionally.

However, I also have lesser goals. For example, I want to clear eleven feet in the pole vault this year. I also want to muster enough courage to ski Starr (an expert-only trail on Mount Mansfield in Vermont).

I also have more distant goals. For example, I want to have a good job working with computers and robots after I graduate from college with perhaps a Master’s degree. But, perhaps strongest of all, I want to remember the “best four years of my life.”

Still here? Cool. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Or where you went to (or will go to) college. Or whether you can read. Or if you did any of the things I did, or whether you think I was right about anything in the essay.

And the obligatory PROM PHOTO! Since it was high school, y'all.

ancient radio history

I found out the other day that 2012 is the 50th birthday of KALX, the radio station at UC Berkeley.

Why does this matter to me?

For eight glorious months in 1988-1989, I worked the news room at KALX. One or two mornings and two evenings a week, I learned to report, write, engineer, and produce news broadcasts.

I will never forget my first story. I was assigned to write the kicker--the final story of the broadcast, after the sports guy tossed it back to the anchors. Often meant to be a humorous or lighthearted finish. The story was of a man who had been found in his apartment several weeks after dying there alone. Ha, ha! How lighthearted can you get! I wrote something that was probably 200 words, and the producer (I forget who it was, but she was awesome) took my paper, grabbed a red pen, and obliterated half the words.

At first I stood dumbfounded. Although I was an engineering major, I was a pretty good writer. I thought. Then I read the result, and it was so much better. I learned about omitting needless words that day. (You'll have noticed, no doubt, I don't edit blog posts with the same vigor.)

We got in the habit of bringing blank cassettes to the studio to tape our broadcasts. I held on to my dozen or so tapes for 20 years. Finally, last spring, I digitized them.

My crowning achievement was on May 25, 1989, shortly before graduation. I went into the news room (the station used to be on Bowditch) and found that I was the only one to show up. I pulled lots of wire copy, found a couple of carts from the previous night's show, and steeled myself to do it all myself. Then I heard there was an action going on in People's Park, just a few blocks from the studio. I grabbed a tape deck and ran down there, found someone to interview, asked a couple of questions, ran back to the studio, wrote a quick piece, and settled in to do the newscast.

It's quite a thing to produce, write, engineer, and anchor your own newscast. I think it turned out pretty good, all things considered. Especially given that I had only six months experience, two days a week.

Those were some awesome times. I forget most of the people I worked with but do remember the ones I worked most often and most closely with. Some went on to media careers, but most I think did not.

I learned as much about the craft of writing in those six months as I did from any creative writing class. And I took some creative writing classes from some famous authors, including one US Poet Laureate. There's nothing like a deadline and a 90-second time limit to teach you to get your message across succinctly.

My top five strengths: #2, Ideation

About two years ago, I did this thing called Strengths Finder 2.0 at Day Job.  In 2011 I will blog about my top strengths and perhaps about my least strengthful parts of me.

Strength #2:  Ideation

People strong in Ideation are fascinated by ideas and are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

I love having this strength because it allows me to tell people, "Hey, I'm just the idea guy.  You figure out how to make it work."

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the 25 years since I graduated high school and all the different things I've done.  Along the way, I came up with or started several business ideas that never got off the ground.  Some were a bit inane, like during the dot-com boom wanting to build an online store to sell men's underwear and socks.  The only viable exit strategy was to sell to a bigger retailer.  I suppose it could have flown after all.  Cheap commodity items that single men need to buy regularly, easy to ship, no fuss about needing to try them on.  But really, who wants to tell people at cocktail parties, "I sell tightie whities over the internet"?  That idea was scrapped early.

My entrepreneur kick started in college, when I took an entrepreneurship class for engineers with my friend Belinda, who affectionately nicknamed the two teachers "Slick" and "Hick," perhaps the two most appropriate nicknames I've ever encountered.  Anyway, our four-person team came up with Chef EARL (Easy Access Recipe Library), a handheld electronic cookbook with--get this--modules you could plug in.  Like Atari game cartridges.  The year was 1989, and not only were the founders of Google still in diapers, but the World Wide Web hadn't even unveiled its www or http yet, and Windows 3.0 on a 286 PC was soon to be state of the art.

Chef EARL was to be the first in a series of electronic hand-held gadgets for consumers and the home.  This was when people were still agog over handheld spell checkers and handheld dictionaries with a single line of text (similar to calculators).  This was cutting edge stuff.  The picture above is a scan of the cover of our business plan.

Of course, we never pursued it and all got jobs after graduation.

Only a few years later, I came up with the nutty idea that the University of California (where I went to college) should--get this--have a web site for their athletic department!  Crazy, I know.  Only a few schools had begun such a zany idea.  No one knew how to make money with it.  But with a new friend Reza, we put together a business plan and proposal.  This was way fun because we got some free tickets and got to pal around with some folks in the athletic department for a while, but ultimately we had not much to offer.  Meanwhile, another company (I think they were called FansOnly at the time) got some venture funding and had signed a few big name schools.  We ultimately advised the athletic department to go with the funded group, which has turned into a big business.  Below is an actual slide from our initial presentation, outlining some of the features.

A few years later, in 1999, my friend Chris and I, after kicking around some ideas, put together a business plan that was one of the finalists in the Haas School of Business business plan competition.  We presented to a theater full of people as well as to a panel of judges.  This helped us get into meetings with a half dozen venture capital companies, which was a real learning experience.

What was the business?  Keep in mind that, in 1999, gift certificates at stores were paper and generally required a manager's signature.  They were treated like cash and could be very easily forged.  If they were tracked at all, they were tracked in a ledger.  Our idea was to build a platform, not unlike VISA, to process gift certificates in stores and online and on the phone.  Essentially, our idea was what today is the gift card industry.  I think we were pretty close to getting some angel financing and had some promising discussions with venture capitalists, but just as we got going two competitors we were tracking announced multimillion dollar venture rounds.  We only had a plan and a mockup at that point (and a corporation), and we decided we did not want to play catch-up, so we dropped out.  (1999 was also the year my second son was born, so time was tight and money was dear.)

Not long after, Chris and I joined with three other friends to found pledgepage.org, which we launched about nine minutes before the dot-com bust happened.  PledgePage was a site dedicated to helping people do fundraising for walks and runs and rides and such.  I used it to help chronicle and track fundraising and training for the Avon Three-Day walk for breast cancer we did in 2000.  Eventually, we realized we were not going to make any revenue with it, and the build-and-flip market had dried up, so we donated PledgePage to a nonprofit called CharityFocus, who is still running it today.  It's had nearly 8,000 people register pages and raise over $3 million, with over 60 million page hits.  During our run with PledgePage, I managed to get us into Red Herring as a Catch of the Day.

What's really interesting, I think, is that I only resurrected my interest in writing after I got out of the startup entrepreneurship game.  I was in small companies until 2001, when I got my current Day Job.  It was about 2002 that turned my ideation toward plots and characters and poetry and away from business plans.  I think it was a good move, though it has yet to play out in the revenue department.

This time, though, I think I'm on the right track.

Accelerate your career

A LOT of people ask me for informational interviews at my Day Job.  Most of them are coming out of MBA programs with some sort of emphasis in sustainable or responsible business.  I think it's great, and I love meeting them and telling them about the industry.

But I hate to tell them I think they just wasted $80,000 on their MBA.  So I just keep that to myself.

Honestly, unless you're getting practical education in a specific field of business, I just don't see how an MBA pays for itself.  Most of the people I see went back to school for the degree, not the education.  Most got a "management" or general business MBA.  They did it under the vague impression that having an MBA would get them a better job, make them better dressed... I don't know.  I never understood the appeal beyond being able to put MBA on the resume.  I always thought practical experience trumped classroom theory.

Last week on the train I saw a poster for a night MBA program for working executives.  The tag line was, "Accelerate your career."  And I got it.  People (other than me) have careers.  They view their jobs as a pursuit rather than a means to other ends.  As such, a faster career would be a better career, in the same way a bigger house would be a better house.

And having MBA on your resume could, in theory, accelerate that career.

Back in high school, I took a job at a local drug store.  It actually was the ideal high school job--good hours, cute female coworkers, quality supervisors, low pressure.  But I didn't need money.  Something drove me to have a job.  I didn't know it then, but I think I see it now:  I wanted a job so that some day I could leave it.

A lot of people I know strive for biggerbetterfasterMORE.  An accelerated career means bigger paychecks, which means a bigger house, in a better zip code, with more prestigious friends who wear better clothes, drink fancier wine, and drive faster cars.  And, remarkably, most of them seem happy on that path.

But it's not for me.  As much as I love my Day Job, I can't imagine diving in so deeply as to strive to accelerate my career.  I'm not ambitious in that way (though when opportunity steps in front of me, I'll take it).  So I walk a tightrope with as much balance as I can muster--success at Day Job, but only so much as it supports Real Life.

That's why I quit my second job in high school.  Why I didn't rejoin a company when they offered to bring me back after a layoff.  Why I refused to compromise my integrity at another job, and I got fired for it.  Why I took a 30% pay cut to do something I believe in rather than take a two hour commute for a lot more money.  Why I'm far more likely to get an MFA after I retire than I am to get an MBA.  Ever.

Some people are desperate to accelerate their careers.  Me?  I'd love to slow down real life so I can live more of it.

(By the way, I've never really understood why "executives" go back to school for MBAs.  If you're an executive, shouldn't you already know from experience what they'd teach you in classes?)

the body heals itself, usually

The human body generally heals itself.  Get a scrape, new skin grows.  Catch a virus, your immune system deals with it. Twist your ankle, it'll get better.

Society also tends to "heal" itself--this belief is the foundation of capitalism and democracy.  Bad policies in place?  The electorate will throw the bums out.  Bad economy?  Investors will buy low, and the economy will grow again.  Generally, I think we can see over time that this is, at least at a superficial level, true.

But suppose you got a huge gash on your leg, long and deep.  Without at least some first aid and maybe stitches, the wound will not heal itself.  You may even bleed to death.

Does society suffer the same kinds of wounds?  Are there gashes so deep and big that they can't possibly be healed by society's natural ability to adjust?


Yes, there are.

In 1998, California voters made Affirmative Action illegal for the University of California.  Since then, UC Berkeley has gotten far less diverse.  The university's freshman class is only 3.4% black and about 12% Hispanic.  There are nearly ten whites for every African-American.  There are 13 Asians for every African-American.


In a state (California) where there is no racial majority (every ethnicity is less than 50% of the population), this is a tragedy.  While I hope that one day we will achieve a "colorblind society," which was the chief selling point of Prop 209, today we have a huge wound in our society that needs emergency help.  This is one rift that is not going to heal itself.  Eliminating Affirmative Action in the hope that it will create a colorblind society is much like eliminating medical care in the hope that it will create a disease-free world.  It is backwards and destructive.

If UC Berkeley had been this racially lopsided when I went there in the 80s, I would have gotten a much less valuable education.  This is a real shame.

American Idol, gonna mess your mind

When football season ends, I don't despair in the same way I used to.  Because the Premier League is still going strong, and now I have American Idol.

It's a guilty pleasure, for sure.  I don't vote during the elimination rounds--no patience for it--but I do like to handicap the horses during the auditions and try to pick out the final few.  I picked Taylor Hicks and Adam Lambert, for example, as probably top-fours in their seasons, before they even made it out of Hollywood week.

This year, I have a new favorite who will probably not even make the top 12.  Siobhan.  Why?  Check out her tattoo.  That's right, it's the Gashlycrumb Tinies artwork!  And as you all know, that particular Gorey masterpiece was the inspiration behind my Unlucky 26.  So Siobhan, I'm in your corner, babe.  Call me.  If you win it all, I'll let you tattoo Marrow Manor on your other arm.

When I was in college, I actually had a pretty good singing voice.  I sang all the time, but only when I thought no one could hear.  I had no voice training, did not come from a musical family.  My instrument of choice was drum sticks.  Then, my junior year, I took a sight singing course and had a blast.  I was one of the better students, but that wasn't saying much, to be honest.  I performed better in my ballroom dance class, where, truth be told, all the girls wanted me as their partner.

Anyway, I digress.

At the beginning of my senior year, I took a chance.  The UC Men's Octet, a phenomenally talented and amusing a cappella group, was holding auditions for all parts (alto, tenor, baritone, and bass).  I grabbed the sheet music for the audition song ("Mood Indigo"), headed to the music building where they had rooms with pianos, and practiced.  I couldn't ever quite hit the higher notes in the tenor range, so I tried the baritone part.

The day of the auditions, I was thrilled to see that only the current Octet and about ten auditioners were in a small studio room.  No public humiliation.  My humiliation would stay private.  They were nice enough to ask each of us if we ever had any music instruction, so I was able to set expectations appropriately before even singing a note.

A few went before me, and man, were they good.  A tenor and a bass.  I knew I could never be as good as they were.  But here was my one chance to sing with the Octet, albeit only three of them and in a small room.  So I gave it a go.  We sang through it once, and I knew immediately I had started in the wrong key.  I never corrected out of the wrong key, but dammit I sang the right notes in that wrong key, and they were good notes, and my voice was smooth.

They were very kind.  The head guy said, without a hint of patronization, "I'm not sure that was exactly right.  Let's try it again."  This time I hit the right key and sang quite well, in tune.  Until the last few bars, when instead of the baritone harmony I sang the progression of the tenor melody.  If I'd had any remaining chance, I knew I killed it then.  Still, the guys were super nice.  They asked if I wanted to audition as a tenor.  I knew I wouldn't hit the high range, so I declined.

Listening to the rest of the auditions, I knew I was out of my league.  But really, I knew that going in.  And unlike so many tone-deaf American Idol hopefuls, music was not my life.  It just seemed like a cool thing to do.  I almost left before they announced the results, but I'm glad I didn't.  All the guys auditioning and in the Octet were beyond nice the whole time, encouraging and not the least stomp-on-your-dreams cynical.

To this day, I am stunned I even tried out.  But that's the only way I've ever gained in life--by stepping outside my comfort zone and taking a risk.  That one didn't work out, but I am so glad I did it.