Welcome to Berkeley. Don’t Forget your Condom..

I was going to put an even nastier title to this post but I don’t want this blog to get into any smut filters. In short, the wackoes in Berkeley are at it again – they want to decriminalize prostitution.

I consider myself to be a feminist, but I cannot understand how this is a “woman’s issue”. It seems to me that the people who are going to benefit most by the decriminalization of prostitution are the pimps, who will not have to worry about their ‘stable’ getting busted and therefore be able to make more money for them, and of course the customers, who will be able to buy as much sex as they want without having to worry about police sting operations.

Backers of the measure insist that prostitution is a societal mainstay, a commodity in perennial demand. Therefore, it should be treated like any other job and have unions, government workplace protections, fair wages, insurance and legal recourse for workers who face abuse or civil rights violations

What planet are these people on? Women who go into the sex trade don’t do it becuse it’s a ‘good job’ or has the potential to be one. They do it because for whatever combination of reasons (poor self-esteem, bad coping skills, lack of education, drug addiction, etc) they can’t do anything else. What we should be doing is helping prosititues get the skills and self-confidence they need to stop being prostitiutes, not helping them stay in the sex trade.

Sad Day for the Theater

Sad news for fans of musical theater – Fred Ebb has died.

I was part of the technical team for a production of Cabaret in college. I have a love-hate relationship with the show – on the one hand, it’s great theater, but on the other hand, given the timeframe it’s set in and the unhappy ending, it’s not exactly uplifting material to work on. But then you have a gem like this:

[HERR SCHULTZ]

How the world can change
It can change like that –
Due to one little word:
“Married”.

See a palace rise
From a two room flat
Due to one little word:
“Married”.

And the old despair
That was often there
Suddenly ceases to be
For you wake one day,
Look around and say:
Somebody wonderful married me.

[FRAULEIN SCHNEIDER (spoken)]
You don’t think it would be better simply to go
on as before?

[SCHULTZ]
No.

Rest in peace, Fred. Thanks for the memories.

School update

Classes start tonight for my b-school prerequisite courses. First up, Accounting. My initial feeling is that this will be the easiest of the classes I have to take because it’s the least hard-math of the three, but we shall see.

I still need to go buy some graph paper and possibly a calculator for Statistics. I’m debating whether I should find a software version to install on my Tungsten C or just buy a standalone. Also still trying to find out exactly what the calculator needs to do so I get the right one.

My GMAT prep is coming along reasonably well. The Kaplan CD and the ETS dowloadable prep package are both very helpful. As expected I need to brush up on my math, but the score for my initial practice test was not as horrible as I feared it would be. Since I’m not gunning for the top-tier schools, I’ll be thrilled if I pull a 650 on the actual GMAT, and a 600 would be acceptable. If by some weird miracle I do better than 650 I may revise my plan and try for UC Berkeley or even – gasp – Columbia, but that’s pretty unlikely.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the actual math per se is not always my problem. I’ve gotten questions wrong several times because I’m not parsing the question correctly. The more I practice, and focus, the better I should get at that.

This is kind of cool

Amazing what you’ll find when you’re a police officer exploring the catacombs below Paris:

a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. “There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous,” the spokesman said.

“The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there.”

Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: “Do not,” it said, “try to find us.”