Surreptitious Opinionation

One of the things that has always driven me crazy about economics, particularly on the subject of labor economics, is the notion that hours spent working is always a negative utility. Given a 40 hour work week, for some people, this may be true. would doubtless protest this notion being applied universally. As, I suspect, would . I would certainly object to it being applied at 0 hours of work per week, having been there a time or two. Money aside, the value of the routine and the esteem effects from being productive have a definite value.

What really got to me is this quote from my econ prof, issued moments ago: “We work so that we can consume.” And to this I have only the following to say: Ewww.

Yeah, it’s a math model, yeah I care about money. But that particular statement seemed to reflect some terribly self-destructive tendencies that are overwhelming our society. Our esteem ought to come from what we make, not what we take.

Back to doing my homework in class. 😉

Turned in my six page stakeholder analysis paper. It was supposed to be an analysis on coolition building, but I don’t think I got in the right frame of mind. Instead I made pretty digital artwork for the charts, and talked about economics and ethics. Oh well.

I’m not going to make it to the big gay swim meet. Sad, but true. I was basically leaning towards accepting that while holding out hope for the long shot, then I got a phone call from dad. It seems that Becky’s husband Bob (friends of the family for well over a decade) had a stroke. He’s being kept alive by machines at this point. The funeral will probably be friday or saturday, and I’ll be attending that. Plus it’ll be the last weekend before dad leaves to start preparing for his time in Iraq.

So, this seems like a weekend to go back to Zanesville. Oof.

It occured to me that “bureaucracy” and “politics” are terms that used most often as their value laden connotations of inefficiency or stagnation, and corruption or divisiveness. But they do have value neutral meanings.

What else do you call the means of negotiating decisions as a group? Or the sets of rules and people established to accomplish particular goals?

Sometime last week, I had a rather notable dream. It was probably some combination of discussing abortion with one of my relatively scarce conservative classmates, playing too much final fantasy xi, and reading too much Janny Wurts, but… You’ll probably find it rather disgusting/disturbing, you have been warned

courtesy Joel: god v bush

Ya know it’s sort of ironic that I absolutely will not be watching the debates tonight because I’ll be too busy studying material for a public policy class and preparing to write a paper about a highly relevant political matter. On the other hand, it’s not like the debates are really anything more than a beauty contest.

On a related note, there was a post on a mailing list I admin, and I was so tempted to flame the dork in traditional graffiti.* style. I wrote it up, then deleted it without sending. Still, I felt better.

This probably doesn’t even make sense without the case study as background

Get the last spot in a great 3BR Lower Duplex in Uptown, available October 1st (may be negotiable). The front bedroom is $400/month plus 1/3 of the electric. The unit is a lower duplex with hardwood floors and is already well furnished. It has offstreet parking, coin-op laundry and storage in the basement, a yard, 1 bath, plenty of space. We have broadband internet access, with wireless already installed.

The unit is nestled along a quiet street, easy walking distance from the heart of uptown. Nearby are several major bus lines, grocery stores, restaurants, theaters, and just about any store you will want or need.

We have one rabbit, kept largely in a bedroom. The upstairs neighbors have a cat and a dog. No smoking. We are reasonably tolerant of mess, but try to maintain some order in public space.

Current tenants are a 28yo professional student, athletic, vegan, and a 25yo university research assistant, geeky, easy going. We are fine with straight, gay, bi, male, female, whatever. We’re both gay guys (not a couple), and are only interested in roommates for whom that is not an issue.

Here’s a shocker for just about anyone: Grad school is very time consuming.

In the past week and a half, I have read hundreds of pages of policy related information. I say this without exaggeration. I also read stormwarden, which is, for the most part, not actively bad scifi, but not very good either.

I’m also in 7 courses. I’m one credit hour below the the point where they start charging you on a per-credit-hour basis again (otherwise known as the “stupidity tax point”), 14/15. I’m contemplating a drop and add scheme which would take me up to 14.5, while shifting some of my academic burden later into the semester, and covering a potentially more interesting & relevant topic.

I managed to churn out the minutes for the Federation of Workplace Democracies — Minnesota (FWD-MN) meeting in late september, and take them yesterday. I’ve been making friends with lots of my classmates, I played soccer, briefly, on a humphrey team on sunday. I’ve been eating so many clif bars that my morning protein shake started feeling like variety in my diet. I simply have not made it to the gym, and won’t today either, because I have an ill-considered shift at the coop (which is being changed right pronto).

Of the roommates, I leave the house first, and return last. I do need to rearrange my time commitments, but really, I need to drop some as well.

Oh, and Mesharr has received basically no attention. But I don’t think I’ll drop ff11 just yet. =)

And you know what? I’m feeling pretty good. Heh.