David Foster Wallace’s Last House
21 Feb 2012 / PE
Via Curbed LA on the occasion of what would have been DFW’s 50th birthday today.
What a depressing abode! I’m ready to drive out there right now and hang myself . . .
EppsNet
Notes from the Golden Orange
Underrepresented Minorities in the UC
22 Jan 2012 / PEThe University of California is prohibited by law from considering race in the admissions process, but they are allowed to identify certain ethnic groups as “underrepresented minorities.”
Here are some freshman enrollment numbers at UC Berkeley for Fall 2011. The first four groups on the list are considered underrepresented; the others aren’t.
| Ethnicity | 2011 Fall |
|---|---|
| African American/Black | 130 |
| Mexican American/Chicano | 325 |
| Other Hispanic/Latino | 150 |
| Native American/Alaskan Native | 33 |
| Pacific Islander | 11 |
| Chinese | 936 |
| Filipino | 108 |
| Japanese | 68 |
| Korean | 250 |
| Other Asian | 45 |
| South Asian | 324 |
| Vietnamese | 142 |
You may also like ...
Don’t Check Asian
22 Jan 2012 / PEAsian kids are putting a different race on their college applications to boost their chances of getting into the top schools.
Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.
That’s a rather modest strategy. Identifying yourself as white does give you a little bit of a boost but to really improve the odds, I’d advise everyone to go ahead and check the Black or Hispanic box. Or Eskimo. Eskimos are kind of Asian-looking.
Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it’s 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.
Here in California, state colleges and universities are prohibited by Proposition 209 from considering race in the admissions process. As a result, the student body at UC Berkeley is more than 40 percent Asian, up from about 20 percent before Prop 209 was passed in 1996. (The California population is 13 percent Asian.)
Other top schools that don’t consider race in admissions also have a high percentage of Asian students. Cal Tech is about one-third Asian. (As a private school, Cal Tech is not subject to Prop 209, but chooses not to consider race.)
Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions officers available for interviews for this story.
Draw your own conclusions. We are being overrun by the yellow horde!
You may also like ...
A Little Castle Comedy
24 Dec 2011 / PESomeone asks one of the Hearst Castle tour guides, “What’s the difference between the evening tour and the regular tour?”
“Oh, it’s night and day,” he replies.
You may also like ...
Hearst Castle is Really a Lot Like Our House
24 Dec 2011 / PE
As we’re touring the gardens at Hearst Castle, my wife points out a plant that’s just like one we have at home.
“Yeah, this place a has a lot of similarities to our house,” I say. “We have a plant, we have a pool . . .”
“We don’t have a pool,” the boy says.
“Well, we have access to a pool.”
You may also like ...
Overheard at Hearst Castle
23 Dec 2011 / PE“Here’s your wristband for the tour.”
“What do I do with it?”
You may also like ...
Engineering is Serious Business, Says Engineering Major
6 Dec 2011 / PEImage via Wikipedia
The dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering expressed support today for a recommendation from a student group that the college create a recruitment and retention plan for women and underrepresented minority students.
It sounds like the dean might be up for lowering the engineering standards to meet diversity metrics. Bad idea. Engineering is serious business.
Also: Preferential treatment by a public institution based on race, sex or ethnicity is prohibited by California law.
I’ve got a better and more legal idea: How about if the women and “underrepresented” minority students suck it up and meet the same academic standards as everyone else?
Or apply to a different school? If they can’t meet the standards at Berkeley, they might do fine at a less demanding institution like Stanford or UCLA.
I’ve attended engineering school myself. We had diversity admits. After one semester, maybe two, they weren’t there anymore. Who was helped?
You may also like ...
Brown Vetoes SB 185
8 Oct 2011 / PE
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a controversial, affirmative action-like bill Saturday that would have allowed public colleges and universities in California to consider demographic factors in admissions processes.
Like!
I hate to sound selfish but whatever “demographic factors” they were planning to consider, I’m 110 percent sure they’d serve to penalize my kid, nieces, nephews, grandkids — everyone in my family now and forever — and for what? Racial inequities of the past that they had nothing to do with?
Not interested in taking the hit for that, sorry.
We’re good people. We stopped inviting the slaveholders to the family reunions because they’ve all been dead for about 100 years . . .
You may also like ...
A Dream that No One Has
17 Sep 2011 / PEFrom today’s Cal vs. Presbyterian preview in The Daily Californian:
CeeJay Harris is one of three Californians on the Presbyterian roster. He didn’t dream of playing football as a Blue Hose because that’s not a dream that anyone has . . .
You may also like ...
What Happened to the Hippies? Where Are They?
16 Jul 2011 / PE
On behalf of UC Berkeley we are sending this message to Cal families to update you on recent news regarding the 2011-12 tuition . . .
A 9.6 PERCENT TUITION INCREASE!? I THOUGHT YOU WERE A BUNCH OF GODDAMN HIPPIES WHO DON’T CARE ABOUT MONEY!
You may also like ...
The Golden State Mutual Building
7 Jul 2011 / PE
On June 1, 2011, the City of Los Angeles reached a significant milestone in its historic preservation program: the approval of City Historic-Cultural Monument #1000, the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building at 1999 W. Adams Boulevard in West Adams. The Golden State Mutual Building is a very fitting recipient of this honor. Built in 1949, this six-story commercial building was designed in the Late Moderne style by architect Paul R. Williams 1894-1980. Williams was the first certified African-American architect west of the Mississippi River, the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects, and also served on the first Los Angeles Planning Commission in 1920.
You may also like ...
All Politics is Local
16 Jun 2011 / PE
California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a state spending plan today (June 16) that would have deepened the cut in financial support for the University of California by another $150 million for the coming fiscal year.
In principle, I like cuts in public education funding, but since I have a kid entering the University of California in the fall, I applaud Gov. Brown’s commitment to high-quality yet affordable education via the UC system.
You may also like ...
Grauman’s Chinese Theater – 1930
7 Jun 2011 / PE
Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood before the premiere of Howard Hughes’ 1930 film Hell’s Angels.
You may also like ...
My Kid is Going to Cal
3 Apr 2011 / PE
I always kind of assumed that the boy would follow in his pappy’s footsteps at USC, but he just sent in his intent to register at Cal, thus ending (effectively) a journey that started on his first day of kindergarten last week.
It wasn’t last week? It was 13 years ago? It seems like last week. I picked him up after school and he sat in the back seat of the car sipping a juice box while we talked about his day. I have a video of it.
There are three schools in California that you could plausibly go to ahead of USC: Stanford, Cal Tech — two small, private schools with ultra-low admit rates — and Cal.
Cal has a better academic reputation than USC. USC has cranked up the academics over the last 20 years, and especially over the last 10 years, to the point where if you compare the academic numbers for incoming freshmen, Cal no longer has the advantage — but reputations die hard.
I’m happy that the boy is going to Cal.
I’m happy about how happy he is to be going to Cal.
I’m happy that some of his classmates are also going to Cal.
I’m sad that he’s going to be leaving.
You may also like ...
The Price of Taxing the Rich
30 Mar 2011 / PENearly half of California’s income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population’s during the recession. When they crashed, they took California’s finances down with them.
You may also like ...
Here Come the Brides
30 Aug 2010 / PEWe went to a wedding over the weekend, although it won’t be recognized as such by the state of California because both people involved were women.
One of the women is Asian, the other Mexican. Both are in their late 20s, both pretty, and they seem to be very happy together.
The reception was held at The Reef restaurant, affording a beautiful view of Long Beach harbor and the downtown lights beyond.
The bride wore white. The other bride also wore white.
We couldn’t find a “bride and bride” wedding card at the Hallmark store.
We asked an employee about it, an older woman. “You want what?” she said.
“A bride and bride card. All the wedding cards are bride and groom, a man holding a woman’s hand. What we want is a bride and bride card.”
“We don’t have anything like that,” she said.
“You should get some.”
Silence.
The gentleman who performed the wedding told us that we were not just attending a wedding, we were striking a blow against ignorance and bigotry.
Actually, I wasn’t there to strike a blow for anything; I was there because I was invited.
If you’re going to position yourself as a champion of tolerance and broad-mindedness, you should go ahead and drop the name-calling.
The Mexican bride’s family is, I assume, Catholic and opposed to this kind of thing — women marrying women.
“I was a little taken aback when I first heard about it,” her dad said.
But she’s still their daughter, granddaughter, sister, niece, etc., and the family turned out in large numbers to support her.
The Asian bride’s family was a different story. Other than a couple of cousins, they were in absentia.
Her mom didn’t attend because she opposed the wedding. Her dad didn’t attend because he didn’t even know it was happening. Mom didn’t tell him because she’s afraid it would kill him.
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Guys who wear porkpie hats to formal affairs.
Other than to call attention to yourself at an event that’s not about you, what possible reason could you have for wearing that hat? To protect your head? From what?
Lose the hats, hipsters.
You may also like ...
Here’s a Strange Fact
4 Aug 2010 / PE
Prop 8 was approved by a majority of California voters, it was overturned today, and yet I haven’t heard one person say that they’re anything but happy about it.
I think a lot of people are not comfortable with the idea of same-sex marriage but would rather not say so outside the privacy of the ballot box for fear of being labelled by loving, inclusive Prop 8 supporters as hateful, bigoted, hypocritical assholes who should all go burn in hell . . .
You may also like ...
Winter in Los Angeles
16 Feb 2010 / PEUSC in the foreground, downtown in the background . . .
You may also like ...
Notes From Interstate 5
18 Jan 2010 / PE
It poured rain all the way from San Jose to Los Angeles . . .
“It’s a good day for cows,” I say to my son, as we drive by a field of happy-looking bovines.
“It’s raining,” he points out.
“I don’t think cows mind a little rain. They get to eat lush, moist grass. Instead of dry grass. Do you like to eat a dry salad with no dressing? You don’t, right?” No answer. “I’m trying to think like a cow here.”
“My phone would go out right in the middle of a text message,” the boy says.
“That’s awful,” I say in mock sympathy.
“It is,” he says. “It was a thoughtful, heartfelt text message.”
“How thoughtful and heartfelt can a text message be? Aren’t you limited to 160 characters?”
“Not to Verizon numbers.”
“Oh. Well, that is disappointing then.”
We’re driving past an agricultural area with nothing but four- to five-foot sticks in the ground as far as the eye can see.
“What are they growing here?” he asks.
“Sticks,” I say. “It’s a stick farm.”
When I pass trucks on the highway, I always signal before pulling back in front of them.
Most people treat truck drivers and their vehicles just as obstacles to be bypassed. I treat them as real people with real feelings.
I think it makes life better for everyone . . .
You may also like ...
The Path of Trojan Dominance
11 Nov 2009 / PESteven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California since 1991, announced on Nov. 2 that he will retire in August 2010.
Sample is widely credited with bringing about an institutional rise at USC that is unparalleled in American higher education.
I’m so proud of what USC’s been able to accomplish academically under the leadership of Dr. Sample. When I went to USC in the pre-Sample era, the conventional wisdom in Southern California was that the rich kids went to USC and the smart kids went to UCLA.
(No one in my immediate family is or ever has been rich. I was able to attend USC on an academic scholarship, although it must be admitted that my wife and I both have rich but not overly bright cousins who also graduated as Trojans.)
Since 1991 though, SAT scores at USC have gone up more than 300 points. They passed up UCLA years ago and the gap continues to widen, much to the chagrin of Bruin alums.
So the way it works now is that the rich kids and the smart kids go to USC, and if you don’t fall into either one of those categories, you might be UCLA material.
Thank you, Steven B. Sample!
FIGHT ON!!!
