dispatches from comps, part 5: comps mini-journal.

My comps questions have dropped! I have 2 weeks to complete three 10-12 page essays across three fields of history- Latin America, 19th and 20th century US, and post-war politics and federalism. Big Brother has suggested that I keep a mini-journal of my comps experience, and what better place for it than my neglected blog? Comps liveblogging, how very digital humanities of me! Or to be passe, how very vintage LiveJournal of me! I will try to post every day until May 6, at which point I will collapse into a heap, or maybe even disappear like the Mystics in The Dark Crystal. (spaced out-podling-sucked of vital essence is more likely)

I like to think that this will give me perspective on the whole ordeal. This is not the most harrowing two weeks of my academic career, or even a major right of passage in my struggle to become a professional historian, but rather, just some funny story I'm telling the internet about my daily life- like #30daysofbiking, only important! #14daysofwriting! Let's do this!  

what is the matter with pennsylvania?

Nothing like a little indulgent historical writing for you. I love that in 1935 you could publish an incredulous essay on your state's mediocre national political contributions. Russ uses the phrase "What is the matter with Pennsylvania?" so many times that it merits a bumper sticker.

"Pennsylvania has become used to pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for others, by throwing its huge electoral vote for the Presidential candidate from some other state. Like a good-natured muzhik, it does all the work and gets none of the credit. One second-rate President, one Vice-President who is often not even mentioned in our history books, two or three well-known Congressmen, not one Chief Justice, a fair showing in several cabinet positions and a good record in one or two others, a string of political bosses whose only reputation comes from machine politics and corruption, an imperviousness to reform, and until recently, a total lack of pride (perhaps justified) in the state's contributions to history? In fine, a century and a half of utter futility. What price glory!"

William A. Russ Jr, "What is the matter with Pennsylvania?" Pennsylvania History  2, No. 1 (January, 1935), pp. 17-35. Accessed on JStor today.

For more on Pennsylvania political culture, check out this episode of This American Life from October 2008.

of all time.

may the barack be with you.

I've been tuning out politics lately (as happens when it upsets me) but was nonetheless long overdue for a picture of The Barack. Can you believe it's been almost a year since I was posting photos of him every day? I miss the mass emotional upheaval of presidential campaign season.

bike math.

a lovely bike spotted whilst in the UK

I was talking to Big Brother last night and I mentioned that I haven't taken the bus hardly at all since I got the folding bike two weeks ago. We started crunching numbers, and I was surprised to learn from Google Maps that my trips to the shopping street (2 miles round trip) and to the University campuses (5 miles round trip and 5.4 miles round trip, respectively) are really starting to add up. No wonder I am hungry all the time!

Anyways, once we got talking about it, I couldn't just stop there and found myself channeling the spirit of social history and making an Excel spread sheet. Here are the results- the sheer data of it all, as sent to BB:

"Per our conversation, I went through my calendar and my spending transactions to determine how many miles I've ridden since I got here. As of right now, I've ridden 94.6 miles since the Old Dutch arrived on 8/23. So tomorrow will make it 100 miles in 24 days- not bad. In the first 2 weeks of the month, I've done 65.8 of those miles, so I am on par for about 140 miles / month just for regular trips to school and the store.

For the whole time, that adds up to 56 one-way trips, which at $1.45 / trip via bus is a savings of $81.20.

I've spent about half that on extra food and beer compared to my usual habits before (not controlling for higher cost of living in an eastern city), putting ~$40.00 towards the value of the folding bike.

But add in the time saved from riding the bus (especially if I billed at my transcriptionist rate of $20 / hr, with an average bus round trip taking ~ 1 hour, whereas average bike round trip is 40 minutes) (making that $20 x .33hr saved x 28 round trips) for a savings (including fares saved) of $172.

So, more or less, the folding bike will have paid for itself in the next two weeks or so... not taking into account which bike I ride, just in general quantifiable savings.

Though now that I consider it, when I had a car-- my insurance quoted me at $155.00 for Philly. Add in my gas costs (going with what I spent last Sept.) of $35.00 and monthly maintenance of the car (towards oil change, car wash) of $20 and that's about $200 / month. Going out on a limb and saying that driving is not all that much faster than biking in this town (parking being a bitch) so no subtraction for time saved. Considering I planned originally to have bike and car here, I can totally add that to my savings towards bike cost, and when you include projected hypothetical bus costs (not paying for all modes of hypothetical transportation even though they are redundant) the folding bike will actually be paid off by like, Thursday.

Obviously, the numbers game is useless because (the math may be wrong, heh heh...) the physical fitness and mental health benefits and sheer convenience mean that bike has already paid for itself, but the statistics make it kind of gratifying now that I am spending basically $0 on transportation and instead of putting all those miles on a car or a bus, I put them on my legs.

Sweet."

briefly.

I found this article fascinating-- studies have found that only 20% of Americans identify as liberal but yet Obama has a 70% approval rating. I loved that the #1 word people chose to identify him with was "intelligent." It's interesting that doing the job well bridges the gaps between political philosophies. That's change I can believe in! (as opposed to change that other people can't believe in... my nerdy little self went ga-ga over the linked video and website-- I must study these people)

Also in conservatism... Princeton's Julian Zelizer is writing for my beloved moderately conservative news site The Daily Beast. I may or may not have almost peed my pants over this. What can I say, I love the idea of making smart people political commentators (what a concept!). Step aside, Meghan McCain! (she is driving me nuts lately... she clearly has no idea wtf she's talking about when she can't even differentiate between conservatives and Republicans... oy)