Textbook Buy-back

If the Real World Used Textbook Buy-Back Policies

Buyer: I’ll give you $5,000 for it.
Homeowner: Are you crazy? I just paid $100,000 for it in January. Haven’t you heard of value appreciation?
Buyer: All I’m hearing is that your house is used.
Homeowner: Hardly. I spent like 2 days there in March and then 6 hours yesterday. This house is in perfect condition.
Buyer: Oh yeah, what’s this note above the backdoor?
Homeowner: It says, “Low door. Mind your head.”
Buyer: Low door, huh?
Homeowner: Yeah, but that’s not a problem. It’s just a feature of the house. It’s supposed to be like that. That’s just a helpful note in case people didn’t notice the height of the door.
Buyer: It sullies the whole house. The whole house is crap because of that note!
Homeowner: What are you talking about? This isn’t even a pretty house.
Buyer: So you admit it!
Homeowner: Yeah. It’s a stupid looking house on a boring block, but people still want to buy it. Haven’t you heard of supply and demand?
Buyer: Nope. And I’m not going to give you more than $5,000 for this dump. That’s just policy.
Homeowner: What are you talking about? What policy?
Buyer: Just policy.
Homeowner: Well, maybe I won’t sell it to you. Who knows, I might need this house in the future. It’s got pretty cool…faucets. I might want to use those. Ugh, fine. Give me the stupid 5 grand.
Buyer: Great doing business with you.
Ex-Buyer: Attention, all prospective buyers! Who wants to buy this fantastic, mint-condition home for $90,000?
Ex-Homeowner: What?!
Ex-Buyer: Sucker.

Blergh

So there’s often a rather vociferous, angry, and generally grossed out response to furries…

Why is that not okay…but this is?

For some reason people who go on Second Life, bloggers, and WOW gamers are demonized…but that shit is allowed on the tele for mainstream viewing and purchasing?

I guess we’re starting our kids early on furrydom.

Higher Education: Only For Those High Up on the Social Foodchain

The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”

I posted this link in my Facebook, but I figured it should be addressed here as well. So I’m glad I’m getting my degree now, considering that I went to this college based solely on financial aid. I’m barely affording it as is.

The future of Gattaca is sadly, not too far off.

But then again, 17 out of 23 people in my cyberpolitics class are on the way to become millionaires. One girl in my group was determined to make 10 million. I’m sure someone else raised their hand as well. I guess they don’t have much to worry about.

What the people forced into virtual colleges because commuting to college has gotten impossible due to high gas prices? Virtual education is inferior. It’s not the same as a campus classroom, with established professors.

So higher education is on the way to once more being only for the affluent?

I wonder how many more girls will dance their way to afford tuition?

Look Ma, no spellin’!

I think a fun and meditative exercise would be to occasionally turn off our spellchecks and just type to see how many mistakes we make and how many words we forgot to spell because we do not need to retain this information anymore.

Maybe that’s too pretentious.

I’m just thinking of “Feed,” the book.

Is it really necessary for us to know how to spell? Oldschool humans used to have big heads in order to remember all the twists and turns of roads, but once we began to label and own, we no longer had to retain such chunks of information.

What it seems to boil down for me is that we no longer need to memorize information. All we need to know is how to find the information, if we should ever need it.

Many more animals will go extinct, but does language, spelling, other crafts risk extinction as well?

The Feed book is terrifying me a good bit.

Sometimes I hate taking these classes. Reading these books that crawl under my skin and give me nightmares. Maybe I am being too sensitive, and considering my pseudo-technofetishism, I should be embracing this molding with machine. Yet, I am deeply scared. I’m scared of becoming easily marketed to.

I’m scared of becoming stupid and submissive. I’m scared of becoming Soylent Green ™!

I wonder what would be lost? Sanskrit is a dead language. What’s next? Green? Serbian? Arabic?  Obviously we are all easier to be bought and sold if we communicate the same way. What kind of skills and crafts will suddenly become extinct? Carpentry? Writing? Mowing the lawn? Walking the dog? Flushing the toilet? Cooking for oneself? Close now. Many instant meals. Just mix.

How many things will we be no longer taught how to do because it’s all being done for us. Yet, in order for it to be done for us, we have to buy the thing to do it.

Yet the message is clear. Don’t do it for yourself, let us do it for you. We can do it better. We, being the high-pitched voices of all our life-paraphenalia that live our lives for us. Sim-life, in a way. The reason the voices actually have a particular sound is because I can very clearly hear the high-pitch whine of televisions when they are left on. Although most electronics vibrate, so it would be a mixture of the two. And heat. So if you can, imagine a high-pitched, vibrating, warm and breathy voice.

Does anyone else get the spooks from white noise?

This returns to my rampage on personal education.

Why learn how to learn, when you can be told everything you need to know…except the thirst to know more, to know better, or to know what you want to know. Isn’t that the hardest thing? To know thyself? Isn’t that enlightenment in some fashion? We are our own Sphinxian riddles.