I think I may be tired today. I had a great weekend, but it’s kind of wearing on me now. I wound up taking a two hour nap after work without intending to. I just lay down for a few minutes with a book and it was instant sleep time.
And of course I keep rewriting all of this. Heck, I’ve even restarted this whole blog entry from scratch a couple of times. Anyway, there’s a fuzzy-brained political rant coming up, so if you want to skip this entry, go right ahead.
I’m a bit better now. I picked my Fiancee up after her class at the Dojo, we had dinner, and we’re just letting the rest of the night be nice and relaxing after all of the moving of things that we did over the weekend. But my mind is still restless. There’s a lot of things I’d like to get done, but I can’t seem to stay focused on any of them right now.
I had all sorts of things planned, including a political rant about how Bush has filed a brief opposing the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy in the same week that a University of Chicago study has shown that it helps to have a white-sounding first name when looking for work. My politics tend to lean a bit to the left anyway, so it really gets me fuming when things like this happen. So I had a whole rant ready to go…
But it’s tough for me to write tonight. It’s bitter, bitter cold outside and I’m feeling mentally slow and scattered. I’d like to sleep, but thanks to the nap earlier I’m not all that tired, physically. I’ll try to keep up the rant, but forgive me if it falls a bit flat, ok?
Anyway, I overheard two people talking about the Chicago study as ‘proof’ that affirmative action was a flawed system. Their reasoning seemed to be that the bias against black-sounding applicants was because the people doing hiring think that the applicants have gotten through college solely on the basis of affirmative action, and that therefore they aren’t actually as qualified as the white-sounding applicants. According to them, getting rid of affirmative action would get rid of the bias.
That argument falls apart when you look at legacy admissions. Take a look at George ‘Dubya’ himself… By his own admission, he wasn’t a great student, but his family had political clout and a history of attending Harvard. Didn’t that give him an unfair advantage over other, more academically qualified applicants?
Ah well. It’s getting late and I guess I should try sleeping again. I’ll try to be more interesting, or at least more coherent, tomorrow.