Of the overlooked features of the Amazon wish list, priority rankings are probably the most overlooked. The other day I took some time out to change the priority rankings of the items on my wish list. It’s worth noting that one of my “must have” items (I really wish they didn’t say “must have,” because it’s not like this is a life-or-death situation) is no longer in print. From reading CJR’s review of Paul Cowan’s “The Tribes of America,” I thought this book would very much be worth checking out.

And yes, I filed the “Mac Mini” under “Don’t get this for me.” However, if you really do have the money and would really like to see me start posting movies on my website, go right ahead and order me a hit.

For your pleasure and entertainment …

Apparently, my windshield likes to accumulate ice.

Today’s paper and the car try to snuggle for warmth.

Pretty.

All over the airwaves, newscasters are warning us of the obvious: unless it is absolutely necessary, don’t drive. The roads are icy and stuff. How icy are they? Let’s check the Georgia Navigator.

Apparently, some people decided it would be smart to try driving. Now they’re stuck in traffic.. or whatever you would call it when hardly anyone is moving faster than 35 MpH on an interstate highway.

In case you didn’t get it the first time, the signs give us appropriate warning of the obvious.

Looking at the downtown area, we see a few folks didn’t get it.

Closer to my area of town, we see some folks passing by Akers Mill who also didn’t get it. The good news so far is that nobody decided to take the carpool slip-’n-slide.

Checking out spaghetti junction, we get a photo that simply speaks for itself.

Oh, yeah. By the way: MARTA trains are still running.

And so went the first couple of weeks of Spring Semester, 2005. My graduation date is now slated to be May 14. Following that, the world’s biggest party ever is supposed to be in the works. For some, getting a college degree is about just going to classes and getting a remarkably expensive piece of paper that certifies that its reciepient has earned some particular credential. For me — now that I’m finally graduating from college, 11 years after I graduated from high school — it’s about a long, meandering education, coupled with more persistence than what I thought I had in me — not to mention, the many unexpected places I have now been.

Before I graduate, I, like all the other business school students, have to take a “capstone” class that is supposed to wrap up everything into one course: Strategic Management. Taking this class would be kind of like the first year of law school, except I still have time for at least a few of my “life outside of study” activities. But in any case, we do have to work in teams, and the more we get together, the better our grade for the class will turn out.

One of the assignments for the class is to go through a case study and analyze said company to the extent of producing a remarkably long report. Between myself and a partner, this will take over a month to do all the research and write the report. We’ll have to do a presentation on March 3. This is going to suck.

Our case is about McDonald’s. The actual case study in the textbook is about the beef fries controversy, which involved a class action lawsuit over the fact that McDonald’s used beef tallow in their formula for french fries and passed off those fries as “vegetarian friendly.”

Over the course of the 20th century, McDonald’s became quite the cultural institution for America. The “Mc” in the name has become a prefix to represent shallow materialism and business practices that pervert human dignity. “McMansion,” a word used to describe a big house built on the cheap, makes for a great example of the use of “Mc” as a prefix.

McDonald’s, while it built a remarkably efficient and profitable business model, has caught a lot of controvery over the past couple of decades. The ridiculous misinformation campaign over the spilled coffee case — whereupon a McDonald’s patron received third degree burns from spilling coffee in her lap — was remarkably effective at misleading the public over a very important legal issue. The lawsuit over McDonald’s nutrition standards (you know, the standards that make McDonald’s patrons fat) was rightfully dismissed, but also added fuel to a growing fire over whether this cultural institution is itself a slice of fat that should be trimmed from our society.

And here lies the dilemma for my generation. Of all the 20th century American cultural institutions, which are worth carrying over to the 21st century? We do have the power to vote with our dollars and even at the polls on election day, when important matters of public policy help steer this big ship on a new course. Businesses like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and Krispy Kreme have (in my mind) come to represent the baby boom generation in ways that are oddly nostalgic. The holiday sales; the big, fast meals; the people who love their cars; the movement to the suburbs, away from the realities of cities and farms; the television as an essential piece of living room furniture: all these things have, in the wake of last year’s election campaign, begun to feel alien to me. Yet, these topics seem to inspire that special twinkle in the mind of the nostalgic eye.

I’m not sure whether among those in my generation I am in the minority or the majority when I claim my stake in a future that will dissapoint Karl Rove in his quest for a 50-plus-year reign of neoconservative power. I only know where my own conscience stands on that matter. Whether the baby boom generation will be able to enforce its nostalgisms to my generation will depend on the foresight and persistence of my own generation.

I just got home from a Cobb County school board meeting. Following their recent loss in the courts, the school board met in a special double-secret session to decide how to handle their self-imposed crisis. They met for three hours behind closed doors to determine how they would vote and what message they would communicate to the public.

We in the peanut gallery wondered what they were doing for so long. When they finally emerged from their little comfort zone, the school board gave us a very good idea.

Contrary to Rusty’s dire warnings, the Un-Christian Coalition did not show up in force. They knew what was going to happen, so they didn’t need to practice their show of violence on this day meant to celebrate the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. The school board took no public comments because they knew that this time, the public would be making comments. Some among us tried to comment, but were shushed by the insecure little bastards on the board.

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. –Abraham Joshua Heschel

Tonight, the Cobb County School Board, in their vain and selfish grasp for publicity, once again chose to make both education and Jesus Christ irrelevant in the hearts and minds of thousands of public school students. They decided, behind closed doors, to appeal the ruling. As it turned out, they took those three hours to write a misleading press release, which was full of blasphemous lies. They assert that our school system exceeds national standards, but all they know is how to pass tests and write press releases behind closed doors. They do not know how to educate, but as politicians they would rather meddle in the business of educators.

By struggling in vain to proselytize on behalf of their particular irreligious doctrines, the members of the school board are pushing an agenda that will only backfire. Their intention — let’s be honest here — is to push religion. That much is transparent. However, by pushing religion in the public schools, these school board members will only see a result that is the opposite of the intended effect: these children, pushed to accept a patently false statement, will only be pushed away from their religious upbringing.

What the school board did tonight was wrong and illegal. They should be fired.

Commuting in the afternoon rush hour in the Atlanta metro region can be a real pain. Among the routes that test the northside commuter’s patience and anger management skills, the path from I-285 East to I-85 North is like a slow-moving epic battle scene repeated every weekday.

We begin on I-285 about a mile away from the exit. For anyone versed in an old fashioned sweet southern personality, there is little hope of switching lanes. You could use a signaling device to let your fellow miserable commuters know that you want to switch lanes. But that would let them know of your intentions. That means they can thwart your plans, and they will take any opportunity to do that.

I can see the Spaghetti Junction in the distance. We marvel in its concrete and asphalt beauty and revel in our pointless miserable lives. The engineers and contractors who designed and built this modern marvel command us to pray in reverence to their traffic-reducing solutions. Of course, there is no need to pray to them, or to thank them for what they’ve given to us. All we must do is throw them money with our gas taxes.

Our cars and trucks idle in this massive daily ritual. We spew more gas. We pay more of our taxes that barely support the very maintenance of these roads.

Oh, what the state could do with $111 million. Pay for more fixed-rail transit, perhaps? Oh, what I could do with $111 million! Hundreds of commuters around me dream on of days with more money wasted on our self indulgences and less time wasted in traffic.

Finally, we ascend toward our destination. We await that moment with fear and trembling when we can look toward I-85 North and find out what fate has in store for us.

Sitting in our great concrete parking lot in the sky, a wave of commuters would be angry if we weren’t so resigned to accepting what is only inevitable on the roads: more traffic. By the time we reach Pleasant Hill Road, the feelings are anything but pleasant. The old southern hospitality is driven out of all of us. The new southern surly dictates the rules of our roads.

Today’s Horizon section includes a little blurb about the newly forming “Students for Progressive Transit” organizations at Atlanta’s universities:

Ahead of the Curve:
Students join supporters of mass transit

Published on: 01/10/05

Advocacy for mass transit has spread to metro Atlanta’s college campuses.

Fledgling chapters of Students for Progressive Transit are flourishing at Georgia Tech, Georgia State University and Emory University.

Georgia Tech student Patrick Wolfe, president of his campus chapter, said he became interested in public support for mass transit after taking a class in transportation planning. Joe Winter, president of the Georgia State chapter, said he read about Citizens for Progressive Transit, a metro advocacy group, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and contacted the group to see what he could do to help the cause.

Both chapters have about 16 members, according to their presidents.

“As a Georgia State student, I have gotten to use MARTA on a regular basis and come to really enjoy the experience,” said Winter, who lives in Cobb County. “In fact, I have come to the point where I don’t mind making my commute a little longer just so that I have more time to read on the train or plan out my day a little better.”

Wolfe, also a Cobb resident, said he doesn’t use mass transit as often as he would like but hopes to move into Atlanta after graduation and use it more regularly. He said he often uses the Georgia Tech transit systems.

The Georgia Tech chapter has established MARTA information booths at the campus student center, developed a Web site with information about transit options on campus and throughout metro Atlanta, and opened an ongoing dialogue with Georgia Tech’s transportation office.

Emory’s group, which is newer, has 10 members, says chapter President Koshlan Mayer-Blackwell. So far, the group has surveyed some 300 Emory students about their transit habits.

“We have become particularly interested in MARTA’s ‘inner-core feasibility study’ and the different alternatives proposed to better connect Emory to MARTA rail lines,” Mayer-Blackwell said. “Enlarging MARTA operations along the Clifton Corridor has been a contentious issue in the past, but we hope to advocate for students who feel that improved transit is essential for Emory as a strong institution of higher learning and a member of the greater Atlanta community.”

Ñ Julie Hairston

So, what’s up with us Cobb residents wanting to use MARTA?

Found via City Comforts: The folks at the Ayn Rand institute love to show off how insensitive they are though a blind belief in the religion of the free market.

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government’s to give.

The assumption here is that private organizations can do a much better job of helping the tsunami victims than any government could do. It would be a far more logical argument to say that government and private dollars together would do far more than either could do alone.

And those dollars don’t simply have to be dollars. Certain resources not normally carried by private organizations can be mustered up by government agencies that do carry those resources in its normal operations. A recent story in USA Today takes note, for example, that the U.S. military is sending seven ships that can supply 90,000 gallons of water each per day — talk about turning swords into plowshares. These ships can be used to provide at least some water to those who need it while desalinization plants are rebuilt.

So, what would the private market do? Send Perrier?