Obtuse is the new Arrogant

Ninety percent of everything is going 90% better than I expected. I’m finding something I’d never expected in Island-Beach, and it’s beyond wildest dreams. It’s exciting to work in South Brooklyn. Like, on the first day of school, I found myself on the train with several hundred new high schoolers in the manic ecstasies that [...]

Teach for America(’s Playground): The South Brooklyn Quiz

Got my first inside source, a bilingual high school teacher in South Brooklyn; all told, more than half the students at his school do not speak English as their native language, and of those, only a fraction are functional or proficient speakers of it. Oh, and everybody a) hates each-other b) languishes on foodstamps and [...]

Coney Island, я тебя <3 !

A lot of investigation, but nothing to report yet from Coney Island this week. Expect a huge update package Sunday night (before I crash out and kill myself with orientation on Monday). For now, the pleasure cruise.

Some updates

More exciting developments in the saga that is New York! But first, a little tidbit from unnamed university’s IMPOSSIBLE financial aid department. Only Berkeley could have prepared me for the surly brick wall of a woman known here only as B. With arms folded across her ample and aggressively orange chest, B. informs me that [...]

NYC

It’s my first official post from New York. Currently, I’m pirating internet from the neighbors and hoping nobody finds out. It’s all very Harry Potter—sleeping on the floor, with two suitcases to my name. Hell, I’d rather be like this than like some other people I can name, with their moving trucks on Riverside and [...]

Where Amazing Happens

It’s my last day at anonymous newspaper. I’m neither sad nor happy, just excited to get going to the rest of the world. It’d be false to say I never thought I’d be so happy to leave LA. In truth, I’m much less happy than in the past to be going, because I really did [...]

Coca-Cola as an economic indacator

Coca-Cola, universally and simultaneously loved and reviled by the poor, poor nations, and American gastronomy, may be the best indicator of overall economic health on the long-suffering continent of Africa, says the Economist (via NPR).
Turns out, tons of the carmel-colored, sugary stuff is produced there, and the local price is relatively low (compared to someplace like [...]

The new scourge on the American Women

That’s right. It’s constipation.
If you haven’t noticed the sudden algae bloom of fiber cereals in your local grocery store (and advertised on your favorite late-nite tv show), you may still have picked up on the not so subtle messages from our friend Jamie Lee Curtis and the good people at Activia. Or maybe you tried [...]

some big news…

Something big has happened in Tinsel Town. Well, not really (i just happened to be there when it went down). The Anonymous New York City university has changed. I’ll still graduate in 2009, except now, graduation is in May. And the local is Uptown.
more soon.

Think Europe’s so great?

Think again. So, if you know me, you know the one thing I hate most in intellectual worlds is the circle jerk that is Western Europe. Sure, this blog is called 3rd World Imagineer, so you can tell pretty quickly where my biases lie, but when is the study abroad set going to stop throwing [...]