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| via Dinner A Love Story |
Meals | Sides | Snacks |
Chicken *Thai salad *Whole roasted *Taquitos *Burritos *Nachos *BBQ *Hot chicken salad *Oven baked *Chicken w veg soup *Mozz/goat cheese, basil | Veggies *Roasted carrots, onions, tomatoes *Broccoli *Corn *Asparagus *Artichoke *Zucchini *Squash *Green beans *Mushrooms *Spinach | Fruit *Apples w peanut butter *Bananas *Oranges *Strawberries *Grapes *Peaches *Pears *Raisins *Smoothie |
Ground Beef/Steak/Ribs *Hamburgers *Tacos *Fajitas *Chili *Spaghetti *Stuffed mushrooms *Thai steak tacos *Beef bourguignon *Steak au poive *Steak sandwich | Potatoes *Mashed *Baked *Roasted new *Potato skins *Fries | Veggies-raw *Carrots *Cucumber *Smoothie |
Shrimp/Fish *Linguine w pesto, tomato *Quesadilla *Fried Rice *Fish tacos *Grilled fish *Crab cakes *Crab legs *Shrimp/pineapple skewer *Seared tuna | Rice Beans *black *pinto *baked Quinoa Cornbread Garlic bread | Yogurt String cheese Cheese cubes Cheese w crackers Graham crackers Chips w hummus Animal crackers Fig newtons |
Salads *Thai chicken *Chicken Ceasar *Greek spiral pasta *Caprese *Tomato/avocado *Cucumber, feta, tomato *Fruit, nut, goat cheese *Cobb Salad w/ honey mustard (F&E p.140) *Vietnamese Herb&Noodle (F&E p.88) | ||
Pasta *Baked ziti *Ricotta stuffed shells *Lasagna *Lasagna with summer veg&ricotta (F&E p.186) *Spaghetti *Pasta w/Tomato pesto (F&E p.106) | ||
Sandwiches *BLT *Tuna *Egg salad *PB&J *Grilled cheese *Chicken salad *Ham and cheese *Deli *Chiabatta pizza (F&E p.100) | ||
Breakfast *Pancakes/waffles, *French toast *Eggs w bacon *Omelet *Egg McMuffin *Hard boiled egg *Breakfast tacos *Raisin bread *Muffins (bb, banana, bran, coffee cake) *oatmeal *Blueberry&cream cheese muffins (F&E p.36) |
As an alternative to this kabuki, let me describe specific kinds of experiences I see a lot, but that rarely show up in journalists’, academics’ or adminsitrators accounts:
1. Right- or more usually leftwing bigotry to the point where it becomes part of the intellectual air one breathes. A few years ago I took part in a search that produced a candidate who was mildly libertarian. S/he was treated as a Martian. The questions at the presentation were patronizing, extended to actual laughter. The initial daylong interview schedule ended at midday, sending the candidate home early.
2. The vacuous meetings, where nothing of substance gets discussed and everyone–EVERYONE–would rather be somewhere else. Precisely because the meetings are so comprehensively boring, no one ever admits it at them, though there is plenty of backchat afterward. Somewhere there must be a Balzac of American boredom, perhaps whiling away time in the Ohio Public Roads Department or a backwater of the Gates Foundation or maybe even a university, who could convey all this. We need this person to emerge soon.
3. The public corridor conversations about students in general, which are public, deeply insulting, and clinical. They seem to get worse when students are in earshot.
4. The lack of knowledge about popular culture, which of course is most of it and the part likeliest to last. (Shakespeare in his time was popular culture, as was the Bible.) I have run across professors ignorant of Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood, American Idol, Saturday Night Live, etc., far into the night and keeping on ’til morning. They invariably have firm opinions about where America or the world is going or should do. It is hard to argue with them because, well, they don’t have much of a fact base and don’t care about it anyway. The comparison with Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck seems inevitable.
5. It’s startling how much overt anti-intellectualism exists at the middle and top ranks of American universities. I know deans who couldn’t tell you two coherent sentences about what most of their professors do or why they do it. But they can give you precise figures about the grants (some of) them bring in. They actually remark on how dull the professors’ work is, not that they’ve lifted a finger to try to find out about it. Most professors themselves are remarkably ignorant about what their colleagues do and feel no guilt about it.
6. The mistreatment and bullying of graduate students: an endless topic. One of the (many) low points of my graduate experience was submitting the first draft of my thesis to a committee member, who sneered at me that it read like “a long piece in the New Yorker,” as if that was bad. This fellow told me that I should “look to my education,” his phrase, then refused to be part of my committee. He was for some time quite well-known, and one of the joys of my adult academic experience has been watching the utter eclipse of his reputation. Another faculty member then took me on as a project, told me that part of my problem was that I “wrote better than 95% of our graduate students,” thus arousing controversy others avoided. He gave me tips on how to make my writing better while academically grounding it so as to anticipate people like his grump colleague. My savior died recently, got remarkable obituaries and had a spectacular memorial service, which I went out of my way to attend.
7. There’s a softness in intellectual culture as universities purvey it. That is, one can get away with studying topics or subjects (in our field e.g., zoning, Chicago, Robert Moses) without having any actual ideas about them. All you have to do is write about them, and after a while you doesn’t even have to do that. One of the results is large numbers of high-status mediocrities who’ve never really done or contributed much and who, like the I-want-out committee member described, typically find their reputations slipping by late middle age and mercifully don’t get to see them disappear posthumously. Other results: dull papers in dull journals, both with microscopic readerships; ditto for dull books published by dull university presses; vacuous presentations at conferences; a general sense that almost anything is good enough for academic work if only it is sufficiently pedantic or obscure; and ceremonial for-wider-consumption overpraise for ordinary work (“This pathbreaking idea,” when no one can credibly tell you what the idea is, much less what the new path is or what old path it supplants.)
I’m sure others can add further items, but that seems like enough from me for the day.Let me say one nice thing about my place--I think the profs here really like our students. It is certainly part of the culture for faculty to spend time with students (and not just Ph.D. students). The students here are also pretty easy to like--while there is certainly variation in intellectual capacity and work ethic, the students here seem happy to be here, and I hear very little whining.
We hope that readers will take from our paper three main conclusions about the recent trends in U.S. real and relative incomes. First, to date there is little evidence that globalization through the classic channel of international trade in goods, intermediates, and services has been raising inequality between more-skilled goods, intermediates, and services has been raising inequality between more-skilled and less-skilled workers. Second, there is at least suggestive evidence that globalization has been boosting the real and relative earnings of superstars. The usual trade mechanisms probably have not done this, but other globalization channels—in particular, the combination of greater tradability of services and larger market sizes abroad—may be playing an important role. Third, our analysis sheds new light on the sobering fact of pervasive real-income declines for the large majority of Americans in the past decade. These real-income declines may be part of the same globalization and innovation forces shaping returns to superstars and to capital.
These conclusions must be placed in the proper context, which is “there is so much more we need to know from future research.” A good deal of recent empirical work investigates the effects of trade on the adjustment process of particular workers, occupations, and industries (which simple models ignore), and documents workers, occupations, and industries (which simple models ignore), and documents (the sometimes long-lasting) adverse effects. Our goal here, however, has been to advance some basic models describing the economywide evolution of, for example, widespread real-wage declines but rising earnings of superstars. Of course, future research will hopefully explore not only the experience of the United States but that of many other countries as well—both developed and developing.
For superstars, we do not yet fully understand product prices in sectors that employ superstars relatively intensively. This is both because existing industry data do not distinguish highly talented individuals well (if at all), and because many of the sectors in which we presume superstars are concentrated consulting, athletics, and entertainment do not have reliable data on product prices (or much else). Nor do we have good data on personal attributes that make individuals potential superstars. We suspect that for at least some of these superstar intensive industries, globalization has played an important role in boosting demand for their services—both via the information technology revolution reducing their natural trade costs and thus boosting their tradability, and via fast economic growth around the world boosting demand for their services. But these conjectures await additional analysis.
With regard to the sobering falls in real income for the large majority of Americans, our framework does add some new insights. We agree with Autor (2010a) that explaining falling real income for so many American workers remains a daunting empirical challenge. Much research to date has focused on income inequality, not income levels. We argue that this focus should change, because the post-2000 real-income declines are pervasive, new, and troubling. Our enriched trade framework offers some possible explanations for how globalization and/or innovation work offers some possible explanations for how globalization and/or innovation can boost superstar real earnings yet reduce real earnings of so many others.The last paragraph is particularly, as the author's say, sobering. But it also suggests that the outsourcing debate is more or less irrelevant--I doubt that China and India (other than Bollywood) are much in the superstar business yet.
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