Updated diversions to make use of macros

salad-days-001.tex

@@ -184,18 +184,15 @@ These days, every kid has to have an expensive graphing calculator for school st
 
 I mean, \textit{sure} you can get your kid that Casio, which has all the same features and all the same buttons and is an order of magnitude cheaper, but you spent all that money on an expensive pre-school, and all that money on expensive tutors. Do you \textit{really} (he asked snottily) want to risk little Jimmy's chances of getting into Harvard because you were temporarily too cheap to buy the right calculator? Just buy the TI already!
 
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 A little off track here, but this begs two questions: 1) Why is it always a TI calculator that's required, and 2) Are we teaching kids to learn math or to learn how to operate a calculator? The answer to the first question is that Texas Instruments and the Major Textbook Publishers\texttrademark{} have colluded to produce expensive books that need to be replaced every two to three years [thereby costing the school district money] and that require expensive calculators\footnote{A few years ago, I bought a scientific calculator at the \textbf{dollar store} and tested it against my very expensive TI-92. It was just as accurate as the more expensive calculator, and cheaper by two orders of magnitude. Did I mention that this is a racket? I really should do a YouTube video or blog post about this.} [thereby costing you as a parent money]. It's a racket, but that's capitalism for you.
 
 The answer to the second question is that we are teaching kids how to use calculators. Teaching them how to do actual math would require thought on both the parts of the teachers\footnote{To be fair, a lot of teachers would like to teach kids how to do actual math. But they also need to eat and when it comes down to the difference between doing what is right and doing what pays the bills, they will do the latter. It's not their fault, really; it's just that the system does not like anybody who sticks out. Keep your head down and the worksheets graded—that's what the system rewards.} and the parts of the students, not to mention on the parts of parents and especially of  administrators, who would also be required to grow a spine—and learn how to use it. Again, education in the United States has become a racket, but that's capitalism for you.
 
 Alas.
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 (You can probably tell what my thoughts are on the dominant economic system on planet Earth. There \textit{will} be more of that. If you're okay with that, I'm okay with that, too. If you're not okay with it and you want your money back, it's too late—I've already spent it.\footnote{But that's capitalism for you! \textit{Caveat emptor!}})
 
@@ -235,10 +232,8 @@ This is where memory gets wonky, because I remember seeing this when I was about
 
 One thing I'm quite sure about is that in seventh grade a select group of smart kids from my class were allowed to go to the local ``skills center''\footnote{This was a centralized school where eleventh and twelfth graders who definitely weren't going on to college could take classes like agriculture and welding. We used to teach these classes in each school under the guise of ``vocational education'' but somehow lost our way.} one day a week (Wednesday afternoons, as I recall) to study computers. This was the first time I'd ever laid my fingers on an actual computer keyboard.
 
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 ``TRS'' actually stands for ``The Radio Shack,'' as in \textit{The Radio Shack 80}. This program had a room full of TRS-80 Model IIIs, with an integrated keyboard, and, if I recall correctly,\footnote{But I probably don't.} two integrated 5.25" floppy disk drives. I loved Radio Shack both because the first computer I was ever allowed to sink my teeth into was a Trash-80 and because for a while there in my youth, it was a tinkerer's paradise.
 
 Those of us with fond memories of Radio Shack, and what it used to be, bristle at the memory of how it was terribly mismanaged at the end of its life. But in some weird postmodern way, Radio Shack does live on, just not as you might expect. 
@@ -252,9 +247,8 @@ Tandy actually ran Radio Shack fairly well until the mid 1990s, and had many ele
 RadioShack decided to move away from electronic supplies and electronics and focus on selling cell phones, which was a ridiculous move, since everybody else was also selling cell phones. The period from the early 2000s forward was a period of decline, both in sales and morale (not to mention much clenching of teeth by regular shoppers—I went in to buy some screws to repair a laptop and they didn't even carry metric screws at that point), and finally resulted in bankruptcy in 2015.
 
 The name still exists, because other corporate entities bought the rights to it. So there are still RadioShack stores out there, but they're not Radio Shack. The Radio Shack that so many of knew and loved (it was my favorite store to visit at the mall when I was a teenager) is gone and will probably never come back. I mourn the Radio Shack of my youth as I mourn a long lost lover.
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 That Wednesday afternoon experience was a real game changer for me. It was the first time I had an opportunity to sit down at a computer for an extended period of time and actually accomplish something, rather than just tinker around with the keyboard. We could save our work on cassette tapes until next week, which meant that our projects had some permanence, although I'm certain that all those cassette tapes are either buried in the depths of a storage room somewhere at the skills center, or more likely are buried deep in a landfill somewhere.
 
@@ -327,9 +321,8 @@ So the computer I'm on now has as much memory as 16,384 of the computer I had wh
 
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 If you've studied the metric system, you know that \textit{kilo-} is a prefix that means a ``a thousand'' and \textit{mega-} is a prefix that means ``a million.''
 
 Hold on. (Again.)
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 I can at last sleep soundly.
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 Let's get back to our story.
 
@@ -526,22 +514,15 @@ What I can say is that the first time around, I wanted to get a biology major an
 
 I did not realize it at the time,\footnote{I may not have realized it until just \textit{now}, when I wrote this.} but he was revealing his prejudice as a Biology professor. He was wrong, ultimately (schools absolutely love it when you can teach more than one subject as it provides for a lot of flexibility in scheduling), but his argument scared me. I was going to go thousands of dollars in debt for this degree (I was not smart enough to get a full scholarship, so I had to make up the difference with grants and loans—lots and lots of loans), and if I couldn't get a job, I wouldn't be able to pay back those loans. I would be sentenced to a life of penury, which is the very thing a college degree was supposed to protect against. So I agreed with him and forgot about getting an English minor.
 
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 If you complain about being stuck in a low-paying job, people of a certain stripe tell you that you should go to college. If you do go to college and then complain about being crushed under a tremendous amount of student loan debt, those same people will then tell you that you should have gotten a job that doesn't require a college degree.  
 
 What people consistently fail to remember is that college costs have risen disproportionately compared to the rate of inflation. From 1980 to 2024, the average price to attend a four-year college full time went from just over \$10,000 a year to almost \$30,000 a year when adjusted for inflation\footnote{\kref{https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/college-tuition-inflation/}{https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/college-tuition-inflation/}}—an increase of 180\%. Whereas the state of California used to provide \textit{free} college tuition back in the day\footnote{\kref{https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/digital-tweed/tuition-free-college-yesterday-and-tomorrow}{https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/digital-tweed/tuition-free-college\\-yesterday-and-tomorrow}} it no longer does—because then-governor Ronald Reagan wanted to punish the University of California for tolerating student activism.\footnote{\kref{https://calmatters.org/explainers/cost-of-college-california/\#d6b48652-908b-4639-be19-3f09ecab02f9}{https://calmatters.org/explainers/cost-of-college-california/\#d6b48652-\\908b-4639-be19-3f09ecab02f9}}\textsuperscript{,} \footnote{For more detailed information on rising college costs, see \kref{https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year}{https://educationdata.\\org/average-cost-of-college-by-year}.} (Oh no! We've taught people how to think and now they're doing it!)
 
 A well-educated populace is a public good and there is no humane reason why any economically successful nation should burden its youth with high levels of student loan debt. There are plenty of inhumane reasons, however, the primary one being that conservative politicians do not want a well-educated populace, as it is easier to exploit them for commercial gains if they have no idea what is happening to them. It's much easier to pin their woes on the boogeyman of ``communism'' despite the fact that they have no idea what communism actually is. Unless you have capital, capitalism is not your friend.
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 His second argument was that as a prospective biology teacher, I was required to get a group science ``minor'', which is in quotation marks because it was actually 36 credit hours (the equivalent of a major) rather than the 20 credit hours typical of an actual minor. As a result, I would have little time or energy (or money!) for another minor.