4.14.2005
things
Just to comment on a few news stories I've seen recently.
According to the Los Angeles Times, a rare hamburger is exceedingly hard to find. I love rare beef - juicy beef just tastes better, and the longer you cook beef, the less juice it's got in it. So I sympathize. I'd gladly sign a health waiver in a restaurant if they'd serve me a rare hamburger. For great burgers in the Boston area, go to Mr. Barley's Burger Cottage in Harvard Square.
Darn. Now I want a burger...
The Boston Globe reported yesterday that a local student got a perfect score on the new SAT. I think that's great. It's almost as gratuitous a press release as the one back in 1999 where a kid at Concord Academy in Concord, MA wrote out a press release with his parents regarding how great he was. He sent the release to the Boston Globe and the Harvard Crimson, among others. I think the message he wanted to send was 'I'm successful and I can be an inspirational story to many of you!' Word from Harvard the next year was that he was bullied on campus a lot.
I went to the National Press Club on a field trip once with students from the P. school, and it was a really neat experience. On the wall was a fantastic cover story from a local paper in Texas, which had the headline from 2000, "Local Ranch Owner Elected President".
Finally, two stories have got me particularly down on my economic situation:
The first is a story in the New York Times travel section which, under the 'Frugal Traveller' mark, recently wrote about seeing Paris on $250 per day. A few things: I'd like to be rich enough to the point where $250 per day seems frugal. I spent less than half that per day and stretched my budget, I think.
The second story comes also from the New York Times, in a slow news day human interest profile of Millionaire Walter O'Rourke, who owns a successful railway in West Virginia and other successful investments, and yet who works as a conductor on New Jersey Transit. From the article: "Walter Joe O'Rourke, who never wed, is married to the rails. Despite earning more than what he estimated at $2 million last year from his investments, he chugs along as a conductor, earning a base salary of $52,000 a year." He then goes on to describe his base salary (considerably more than I earned in my last year of teaching, as "pocket change". Boy, isn't that just a ray of sunshine! The article ends with Mr. O'Rourke saying "where does it say that a man can't love what he does for a living?" This isn't what he does for a living! This is what he does for 'pocket change'.
According to the Los Angeles Times, a rare hamburger is exceedingly hard to find. I love rare beef - juicy beef just tastes better, and the longer you cook beef, the less juice it's got in it. So I sympathize. I'd gladly sign a health waiver in a restaurant if they'd serve me a rare hamburger. For great burgers in the Boston area, go to Mr. Barley's Burger Cottage in Harvard Square.
Darn. Now I want a burger...
The Boston Globe reported yesterday that a local student got a perfect score on the new SAT. I think that's great. It's almost as gratuitous a press release as the one back in 1999 where a kid at Concord Academy in Concord, MA wrote out a press release with his parents regarding how great he was. He sent the release to the Boston Globe and the Harvard Crimson, among others. I think the message he wanted to send was 'I'm successful and I can be an inspirational story to many of you!' Word from Harvard the next year was that he was bullied on campus a lot.
I went to the National Press Club on a field trip once with students from the P. school, and it was a really neat experience. On the wall was a fantastic cover story from a local paper in Texas, which had the headline from 2000, "Local Ranch Owner Elected President".
Finally, two stories have got me particularly down on my economic situation:
The first is a story in the New York Times travel section which, under the 'Frugal Traveller' mark, recently wrote about seeing Paris on $250 per day. A few things: I'd like to be rich enough to the point where $250 per day seems frugal. I spent less than half that per day and stretched my budget, I think.
The second story comes also from the New York Times, in a slow news day human interest profile of Millionaire Walter O'Rourke, who owns a successful railway in West Virginia and other successful investments, and yet who works as a conductor on New Jersey Transit. From the article: "Walter Joe O'Rourke, who never wed, is married to the rails. Despite earning more than what he estimated at $2 million last year from his investments, he chugs along as a conductor, earning a base salary of $52,000 a year." He then goes on to describe his base salary (considerably more than I earned in my last year of teaching, as "pocket change". Boy, isn't that just a ray of sunshine! The article ends with Mr. O'Rourke saying "where does it say that a man can't love what he does for a living?" This isn't what he does for a living! This is what he does for 'pocket change'.
