2977 Ramdom Thoughts #459 or so, with indignation

Friday, June 4, 2010

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words.
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.
--Philip K. Dick--

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There's a story on the news now about a young man who was driving on the Taconic Parkway when his car "went airborne" into the woods, rolled four times, and ended up hidden from the road. He suffered back and internal injuries, tried to crawl to the road, and was out there unfound for 4.5 days. He was located by his cell phone signal, and taken to Albany Med, where he is expected to recover. Altogether unthinkable. Horrible experience.

But, here's what bothers me: He was driving a BMW. Those things grab the road and hold it. The speed limit on the Taconic is 55 mph even though it's four lane divided because it's actually a localish road with many crossing roads and no traffic lights. It is NOT a limited access road, not a throughway. Local folks get very angry at fools who whip down the Taconic like it's some kind of freeway - it's not! Not one news report over the past two days, and there have been many, have mentioned what caused the one-car accident. It could have been a deer, I suppose, which is another reason the speed limit is 55. (Rolled four times, in the woods, after losing control at 55?)

I have my suspicions, and I suspect he may have reaped what he sowed.

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I guess I'm into blaming people for their own screwups today.

I read an article a few days ago about education loan debt. The author of the article seemed to think that it was the fault of the college financial offices that graduates were leaving school saddled with enormous debt, that the schools are not advising them correctly. The example used was a young woman who, with her widowed mother, and no savings for college, and no big academic scholarships, decided that even so she needed to get degrees from the most prestigious of schools to assure her future. The best of the NY state schools (and there are some good ones, including a very good FREE school in NYC) would not do.

She kept borrowing money, and ended up with a masters' degree and $97,000 debt - and she can't find a job that offers more than a hair over minimum wage. Since the loans were from several sources, the payments are concurrent, and she can't afford to pay them. Declaring bankruptcy won't work, because educational loans cannot be discharged by bankruptcy. She's in a bad place.

Now, we're supposed to feel sorry for her, and agree that she got some bad advice, and the fault lies with the school financial office.

Sorry. I don't think so. She made some very bad decisions, and I suspect she ignored some very good advice that wasn't what she and her mother wanted to hear.

The absolute kicker came finally in the last paragraph. It was so bad it made me swear out loud. Can you guess what her super expensive degrees, the degrees that absolutely had to come from prestigious schools and were to assure her a comfortable future in her choice of assured high-paying jobs, are in? Some technical, financial, professional, or scientific discipline, right?

Nope.

The answer is at the butt end of this post. Wait for it. Don't jump ahead. It'll spoil your mood for an hour. You'll want to kick her, and the author of the article, around the block.

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NYS's budget is in deep do-do. The governor wants to add a new tax on sugared carbonated drinks, "juices" with less than something like 10% real juice, and other crap in a bottle.

This proposal has been countered by a barrage of commercials with a young mother unloading grocery bags, and pointing out that the tax will raise her monthly grocery bill by some outrageous amount, and in this economy, she can barely feed her family, so please Governor Patterson, don't take money out of my family's mouths.

The commercials piss me off. Look, lady, if you need money to feed your family, why are you spending so much of that budget on crap in a bottle anyway? The people putting out those commercials don't care about you, your budget, or your kids. They're just worried that you might buy less of their crap.

I guess I really am in a bad mood today....

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Ok. Change of pace. Here's a video. It's 6.5 minutes long, and one of the scariest things I've ever seen. If you have a serious problem with heights or edges, don't watch it. If you do watch it, think about what it must have taken to build that path. (I do, and I did, and I lived. Didn't even throw up once, although I did discover that I can still hold my breath for 2 full minutes.)

From http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/scariest_path.html:

"This walkway now serves as an approach to Makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro in Spain's Andalucia. And it is the hairiest path. The area of El Chorro situated in the south of Spain is renowned amongst travelers and mountain hikers for its stunning scenery and climbs, yet this is not the main attraction on offer, El Chorro is host to one of the most dangerous walkways in the world, built by workers to transport materials between the Chorro and Gaitanejo Falls."

I always thought climbers had to be a little crazy.

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The answer: The young woman's degrees are in religious and women's studies. Even typing that now, especially when she and the journalist are trying to assign the blame anywhere but on the poor decisions made by her and her mother, pisses me off.
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