Being Blue Hardly Makes You Green

It's often presumed that Bard, deemed by the Princeton Review as an a institution of "Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians," is a radically green campus.^{1, 2} If the administration and students at Bard were truly invested in maintaining a green campus, one would expect them to be a little more conscious of some simple behavior that's detrimental to the environment: turning lights out when they leave a room; investing in printers that have the capacity for automatic duplexing (I just printed out a 32-page article in the library); not littering. Am I expecting too much of the intelligent, liberal population of Bard?

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¹"Best 361 Colleges." The Princeton Review. 2007.
²Bard is first of the list of "Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians." Apparently the students also "Ignore God on a Regular Basis" (#2) and smoke a great deal of pot ("Reefer Madness," again #2).

Merci, La Poste

Alas the French postal system has redeemed itself in my eyes. I sent a letter to Paris a few weeks ago and, after not hearing from the addressee, believed for some time that the French couriers had been stayed by rain or snow or heat or maybe one too many glasses of wine along with a penchant for not being invested in their work. I know the Francophiles will be displeased with that last statement for implying that the French are a bunch of lazy drunks and that's hardly the esteem in which I actually hold the French, but one must wonder about the motivation of workers in a society where citizens are essentially guaranteed a job for life once they're hired. As for being alcoholics, that's made from wholecloth on my part (mea culpa).

Of course, at this point, critical thinkers out there are screaming at their monitors: "What about the U.S. postal service?!? They're not exactly reliable, now, are they?" In short, yes, they are. Very. Complain as people may about the quality of service from the venerable USPS, few can deny that, in comparison to other countries, the postal system in the U.S. is one of the best: it is highly efficient and delivers 93% of first-class mail within its service commitment.¹

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¹United States Postal Service. "2006 Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations." 63. 2007.

A Brief Complaint

I generally don't complain about being single, but as the rain comes and the days get longer, as the frigid chill of February fades from memory, as I look around and see more and more couples, more of my peers happily involved with someone else, I grow weary of my solitude. I can endure it infinitely, but, o, how trying it can be at times like these.

High-beams

I just returned to campus from a weekend with my folks in Boston and I've a splitting headache: some nut-case on the Taconic was not only driving like an idiot (speeding up and slowing down at random, driving parallel to cars in the slow lane instead of passing them, &c.) but was doing so with his high-beams on. I did manage to get behind the fool, but he'd been behind me for some time and his headlamps had already done their damage. Qué será, será, but still, what a pain.