inkbluesky

the light on this dock ain’t natural

Ain’t

Ain’t arose toward the end of an eighteenth century period that marked the development of most of the English contracted verb forms such as can’t, don’t, and won’t. The form first appears in print in 1778. It was preceded by an’t, which had been common for about a century previously. An’t appears first in print in the work of Restoration playwrights: it is seen first in 1695, when William Congreve wrote I can hear you farther off, I an’t deaf, suggesting that the form was in the beginning a contraction of “am not”.

As in I can talk pretty I just ain’t in the mood today.

I had this bookmarked for a while and forgot, Photojojo

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Mostly just fun stuff that most people can do.

Serving It Up

College graduates are “applying to service organizations… in record numbers,” says USA Today. Teach for America has tripled its applicants since 2000, the Peace Corps has more volunteers than it’s had in 30 years, and AmeriCorps has 50% more applicants than it had two years ago.

Before this generation pats itself on the back– or worse, before our parents do– let’s take a step back to consider why this is and what this might mean.

While I’d like to believe that we’re the most self-sacrificial generation ever, I think it’s more likely that we’re volunteering so much because we don’t have a lot of other options.

For one, we’re massively in debt. And thanks to the largest cuts ever in student aid–which caused interest rates to soar on July 1st– we’re in even worse debt. A lot of people join the Peace Corps because they care about starving Africans, but a lot of people join because they know the Peace Corps helps pay your debts.

Meanwhile, the labor market for recent graduates, while showing slight signs of improvement, remains atrocious. It’s possible that everyone signing up to teach in inner city public schools is doing so out of a deep sense of mission; but it’s also likely that many of them are doing so because the starting salary– around $37,000 a year– is much, much higher than other available jobs.

While he makes some good points about debt, the economy, and uncertainty about the job market, there is nothing new about people doing the right thing for less then purely altruistic reasons. None of us are saints. Yet I think that the people he is referring to could have done something else besides, teaching in poor schools for instance. They probably figured that yes it would help with their debt and yes they’d be doing some good too. Call it mutually beneficial back stretching. he also accuses these non-saint of having low expectations as far as social change. Maybe they’ve just modest and realistic. Real change can be sudden, but generally takes years; though the net has and will accelerate things a bit.

I live in the stone ages, I do not own a scanner. If I had the cash I might consider this one if only to have one that looks like it fell off of an alien’s rental car, HP Scanjet 7800