The top of the list was dominated by elite private universities, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology taking the top spot. Its net 30-year ROI of nearly $1.7 million makes it the most valuable undergraduate degree in the nation.

Business types can get as snooty with me as they want, but the commodification of college education in the US enrages me. Colleges are not corporations. Education is not a product to be bought and sold and traded. I know many people would be a lot happier if it were just the purchase of a diploma, something as inert as purchasing a set of encyclopedias. It would require a hell of a lot less effort and discomfort. But that mindset misses the entire point of education.

Education isn’t a product because it’s about personal growth. Our grandparents don’t become mature and wise by purchasing things. A person gains maturity and wisdom through experience, through loving and losing and grieving and enjoying. Likewise, a college education provides particular kinds of mental experience.

Going to college means more than drinking your way through your first years of independent life and walking away with thousands of dollars in debt and a magical piece of paper that showers money on you. College isn’t about “investment,” at least not in the strictly monetary sense. The whole point of spending all that money on tuition, and not sticking it in some high-yield financial investment, is to improve yourself: to learn to think, to engage on a higher level with the world around you, to critically evaluate evidence, to become a better and smarter person because of your years of being mentally challenged.

At the best schools, you can also form and take advantage of the social networks that can help you succeed (and that, I suspect, largely leads to the $1.2 million difference between those college graduates and people with a high school diploma). But you don’t have to join the Ivy League network of good old boys to benefit from an Ivy League education, and a community college education can still make you a smarter and more well-rounded person.

The real “return on investment” of a college education cannot be measured in dollars and cents — or, at least, not directly. If college graduates make more money, it’s because even the most cynical employers see a college degree as evidence of mental investment, of the development of skills and abilities, of the ability to complete tasks and accomplish goals, of training in diverse fields by people who are very very good at what they do, whether that’s chemistry or anthropology or history or art. We live in an increasingly complex world, and college teaches people to think in more complex ways, to negotiate more complex interpersonal relationships, and to grapple with more complex issues.

And these things matter more than money does.

I have been a LOST fan — devotee, even! — ever since the summer after Season 1, when I devoured the whole season on DVD over the course of about 48 hours. Electromagnetism? I’m there! Time travel? Bring it on! Alternate realities? Excellent! For the five seasons since then, I have watched every episode the night it has aired, loyally believing that you had a MIND-BLOWING plan despite that middle section of Season 3.

But after watching tonight’s episode? I don’t even know, y’all.

Spoilers up through this week’s episode after the jump!

Don’t get me wrong: I love Hurley, and Hurley-centric episodes almost always make me happy. I thought it was interesting that Libby was back, that she was in the mental institution, and that she remembered Hurley. I hope those wacky kids get it together.

Most of tonight’s episode was pretty good, really; I like Hurley’s transformation into the leader, and especially Jack FINALLY learning to shut the hell up and let someone else take the lead. Except now I’m afraid that Hurley was right and that Jack somehow “abdicating” is going to lead to DOOM and DEATH and that will annoy me. Note: Just because Jack has a savior complex doesn’t mean he actually has to save everyone!

But what really pissed me off was Ilana’s death.

“SERIOUSLY?” I shouted at the TV, alarming the neighbours, I’m sure. “SERIOUSLY?! Another dead lady? You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” You can tell that’s an exact quote because it’s so eloquent. But this is getting ri-goddamn-diculous.

Let’s go over the fates of the main female characters on the show!

• Shannon: Dead.
• Ana Lucia: Dead.
• Libby: Dead.
• Nikki: Dead. (Lostpedia has her listed as a main character because she got a flashback episode, so I do here as well.)
• Charlotte: Dead.
• Juliet: Dead.
• Claire: Alive, but infected/evil.
• Sun: Alive, but can’t speak English anymore.
• Kate: Alive.

So 67% of the main female characters are dead; 89% are dead or otherwise negatively altered. Kate is the only one who is still (a) alive, (b) able to speak English, and © not in the habit of creating dead squirrel babies.

But look at all these dudes who are still alive!

• Jack
• Sayid (although he’s infected)
• Ben
• Miles
• Lapidus
• Jin
• Hurley
• Sawyer
• Desmond
• Richard
• The Man in Black

That’s 11 men to 3 ladies. And whereas only 33% of the total female characters are still alive, 61% of the male characters are.

And yes, the numbers favored the dudes to begin with. The total number of main male characters is exactly twice that of female characters: 18 men to 9 women (and that’s not even counting Jacob!). But, I mean, that’s an accurate reflection of the general population, right? Two men for every lady? OH WAIT.

LOST, I love you. But I call shenanigans.

Sick and tired of ladies dying,

Bibliotrek

Orbit, 2010. Click to embiggen.

I’m not gonna lie: I picked up this book because of the cover.

I was wandering through the library and it was facing out on a shelf of new fiction. The colors caught my eye, and then I looked more closely at it and thought, “AWESOME, a woman of color is the heroine!” And, after finishing the book, I am even more impressed by this cover; it seems like the artist not only read but really understood what the book is all about and managed to turn that into visual form. Seriously, I think this is one of my favorite book covers ever.

But on to the book itself!

I tweeted a couple of days ago about how much I was enjoying The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. As soon as I finished the book, I wanted the forthcoming sequel — not because the story is incomplete (indeed, this may be the first book of a trilogy, but it could easily stand alone) but because the world and characters were so compelling.

So here’s the back cover copy:

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.

I don’t know if that would have been enough to convince me to take the book home. What did that was reading the first few pages. The book opens, “I am not as I once was,” and the next thing I knew I had finished the first chapter, while I was just standing there by the bookshelf. So of course I checked it out.

Yeine is an amazing narrator. She is strong and resilient and clever, and — as indicated by the relationships she develops — there’s also a certain darkness to her character. She can be ruthless, but she is never merciless. She navigates the treacherous social landscape of Sky with a certain amount of aplomb, in spite of her status as “barbarian” outsider. In fact, one of the most characteristic aspects of Sky — and one of the most trenchant social criticisms of the book — is how barbaric that supposedly “civilized” society is: violent, bloodthirsty, hypocritical, arrogant, and based on slavery. Life in Darr is also sometimes violent, especially for Yeine, but its violence, however appalling to me, still serves a larger social purpose for the Darre beyond mere entertainment.

The other characters that I found most compelling were Yeine’s steward, T’vril, and the trickster god, Sieh. I liked Lord Nahadoth the best when he too played the trickster, even though his trickery was always more explicitly dangerous than Sieh’s. At one point Yeine explicitly discusses Nahadoth’s specific appeal and her attraction to him: she calls it esui, the longing for the bad boy, for danger, for all those appealing things that are so unsafe. I think Nahadoth will appeal to those who also experience esui: fans of the original Dracula, for instance.

One feature of the book that I should note is the digressions, which really worked for me, but which some readers may dislike. To them, I would say to stick with it: the reasons why the book is structured like it is will become clear. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms luxuriates in language, and Jemisin pushes the narrative structure in fascinating ways. It’s a book that will reward rereading, I think, not just for the characters (although they are wonderful) but also for the form of the novel itself.

On the other hand, there are two aspects of the book that I found somewhat dissatisfying. First is the character of Scimina, who is a cardboard sort of villain. Jemisin posted a spoilery discussion of Scimina on her blog that explains why she made Scimina that way, and that explanation does slot things into place for me. But as a reader, I still felt somewhat disappointed when we got to the end of the book and never saw the subtlety in Scimina that we did in other characters.

The second dissatisfying part of the book for me was what happened with Yeine at the end: I don’t want to be too specific because I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone, but it seemed too pat and perfect.

Nevertheless, I loved this book. I’m certainly looking forward to the sequels!

You can read sample chapters at N.K. Jemisin’s website.

GRADE: A–

Click to embiggen

First-world problems, I know.

Beginning tomorrow, I’m eligible to upgrade my Verizon phone. I’m thinking of getting a smartphone, but I can’t decide whether I should or not. On the plus side, they are shiny and I have wanted one for ages, and they’re so convenient, and I could really use a Map function, not to mention access to the internet anywhere and apps and Gmail and all of the other things that make smartphones so amazing.

On the minus side, the monthly plan is expensive. That may only be one minus to a whole list of pros, but I am not sure that I am willing to make the sacrifices I would have to make to afford the extra cost each month.

But: look how shiny the HTC Droid Eris is! I played with it in the Verizon store a couple of days ago and really liked it. I loved the seven home screens, and I found the virtual keyboard surprisingly satisfying, more so than the iPhone’s, even. I’m looking at the Eris over the Motorola Droid mostly because the Eris is $120 cheaper, but also because I like its design better, especially the Sense UI upgrades to the Android interface. Also, I hear Android 2.0 is being rolled out to the Eris, which means Google Maps Navigation!

However, I also hear rumors that the iPhone is coming to Verizon later this year. So do I hold out for the iPhone? It has a number of perks when compared to Android phones in general and the Eris in particular — a much larger app store, for one — but I am philosophically opposed to Apple’s iron-fisted control over their apps, whereas the Android market is more free.

I don’t know, Bibliophiles. Someone advise me!

Vintage, 1997.

I don’t know what it is about Queens’ Play that makes it impossible for me to finish. Every other book in the series is compulsively readable, but Queens’ Play just bogs down for me every time. It’s not Thady Boy Ballagh, because I always put the book down after that section — although, now that I think of it, perhaps I’m so wearied by Thady Boy that once I’m through that part, I have to take a break. But I don’t think that’s it.

Spoilers for the whole series after the jump!

On the surface, I should love Queens’ Play. I love the O’LiamRoe, Archie, and the whole disguise plot. I think Lymond as Thady Boy is dangerously compelling, although he shows the same characteristics that frustrate me in The Ringed Castle, too: a desire to lose himself — indeed, to kill himself — in the mask he’s chosen. I think this is the only book in which he really seems to wallow, though; Thady Boy is all about wallowing, no matter how much good he’s doing as Mary’s protector in the role. And he does save her. But I think it’s clear that he also horrifies himself: after all, that is what the Robin Stewart subplot is all about.

I think Dunnett does a masterful job of showing Lymond’s dawning horror about his own charm. After all, A Game of Kings showed us Lymond’s charisma and his redemption. It would have been so easy for her to keep Lymond as the perfect leader, endlessly charming and snarky. Instead, we get an extended illustration of the dangers of charisma, in the form of poor Robin Stewart and his helpless worship of Thady Boy, who turns out to be the very person he’s meant to kill. It’s fascinating to watch Dunnett carefully tear down the foundations that she spent the first book building up: we thought we could count on Lymond’s charisma to carry him through anything, and to some extent it certainly does here, but mostly it just causes anguish.

As for Oonagh O’Dwyer: she’s fine, I suppose; I don’t have anything against her, but I do think it’s weird that after the strong female characters we get in A Game of Kings, we have so few in Queens’ Play, and they appear so tangentially. The book with “Kings” in the title deals largely with the actions of remarkable common (in the sense of “not royal”) women — Sybilla, Christian Stewart, Mariotta, Kate Somerville. Meanwhile, the book with “Queens” in the title is certainly driven by the concerns of the queens named Mary (Mary of Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scots, and her daughter, the young Mary, Queen of Scots) but really focuses on the closed circle of male society at the French court — more specifically, on who can infiltrate it (Lymond) and who can’t (Robin Stewart). And Oonagh O’Dwyer is never more than a MacGuffin to those men, even to Lymond, unfortunately. Maybe this is why I always get so impatient with the book.

The next four books in the series give you no breaks, though; I spent a month wholly immersed in them. Perhaps I should take a bit of a break before beginning The Disorderly Knights…

The Dynamically Reserved Duo: Laurence Fox as Detective Sergeant James Hathaway and Kevin Whately as Inspector Robbie Lewis

Sometime last fall, I discovered the TV show known as Lewis in the UK and Inspector Lewis here in the US.

It was like that show was made for me. It’s set in Oxford! It’s dramatic and funny! Inspector Lewis has a fantastically complicated relationship with his sergeant, James Hathaway! The murders are all dripping with literary allusions! Also, Laurence Fox is totally dishy!

Here is why I love Hathaway.

First, Hathaway is reserved and enigmatic in a way that most people would read as boring in real life, I think. (He’s an ex-seminary student whose main pastimes are chess and classical guitar.) But the episode “Life Born of Fire” shows just how deep Hathaway’s still waters run. In that episode, he and Lewis have a bit of an argument. During that whole scene, and especially when Hathaway uses his whole body to shout “You’re not listening to me!”, it becomes clear that he is restraining quite a lot. That is SO my (literary) type. (See also Francis Crawford of Lymond, although Lymond talks and talks to cover up the fact that he’s restraining anything at all.)

There’s another scene in that same episode in which Hathaway’s friend Jonjo is interviewing him and asks what he loves, and Hathaway says that he loves the bells of Oxford. The bells are ritual and order, things that he finds intensely comforting, and that’s so revealing in terms of why he went from the priesthood to the police, as well as why he’s so alone. Part of it is his own restraint, but a lot of it is shown in Jonjo’s skeptical response, which I think is meant to be the sort of general response to a statement like that. Still, it made me want to reach through the TV to tell Hathaway that I love the bells, too.

There’s another fantastic scene between Lewis and Hathaway about Hathaway’s sexual orientation, and Hathaway points out the complete falseness of the idea that there’s a straight/gay dichotomy with nothing in the middle — or, as he puts it, that there’s shoes and musicals on the one side and Yorkie bars and Loaded magazine on the other and never the twain shall meet. In a later scene, Lewis walks up to Hathaway, who is looking through an issue of Loaded. Hathaway hands Lewis a Yorkie bar, but neither the Loaded nor the Yorkie bar really matters beyond the sly little joke. What really matters for Hathaway is the bells, which begin to strike the hour as Lewis walks up, and the restoration of his friendship with Lewis: order and peace.

I can’t think of another character on TV who is allowed to be like Hathaway — reserved, mostly celibate (and possibly bisexual), nerdy — without being ridiculed for it. But Hathaway is all of those things AND spectacularly hot! SWOON.

Inspector Lewis airs in the US on PBS as part of their Mystery series, but I don’t know when the next season will begin. It is supposed to be aired in the UK beginning in May 2010, so hopefully PBS will get it for the summer.

Here’s what the band says about the video:

Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.

Pretty freaking amazing.

Here’s the cover blurb:

Her new summer job comes with baggage

Scarlett Martin has grown up in a most unusual way. Her family owns the Hopewell, a small hotel in the heart of New York City, and Scarlett lives there with her four siblings — Spencer, Lola, and Marlene.

When each of the Martins turns fifteen, they are expected to take over the care of a suite in the once elegant, now shabby Art Deco hotel. For Scarlett’s fifteenth birthday, she gets both a room called the Empire Suite, and a permanent guest called Mrs. Amberson.

Scarlett doesn’t quite know what to make of this C-list starlet, world traveler, and aspiring autobiographer who wants to take over her life. And when she meets Eric, an astonishingly gorgeous actor who has just moved to the city, her summer takes a second unexpected turn.

Before the summer is over, Scarlett will have to survive a whirlwind of thievery, Broadway glamour, romantic missteps, and theatrical deceptions. But in the city where anything can happen, she just might be able to pull it off.

I loved the Hopewell Hotel, which is a character in its own right. I loved the entire Martin family. I loved the performance bits. I loved the relationships among the siblings. I loved that the romances weren’t clichéd. I loved that the book is in many ways an ode to life in New York, the city of endless possibility. (The tone reminded me a bit of Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That,” only without the goodbye, if that makes any sense. Scarlett’s New York is Didion’s first New York, the New York of billowing yellow silk curtains salvaged from old theatres, of broken air conditioning and dusty glamour and boundless promise.)

Most of all, I loved the magnificent Mrs. Amberson, an agent of chaos in the otherwise sleepy and decaying order of life at the Hopewell. While Scarlett’s life feels stagnant, especially compared with her friends’ exotic summers, Mrs. Amberson breezes in and and opens both literal and figurative windows and doors, just as Scarlett airs out the Empire Suite for her. I also liked that Scarlett did something to help Mrs. Amberson grow, too; so often the mentor figure departs a story unchanged — and, to be fair, Mrs. Amberson doesn’t really change much (nor would we want her to) — but I liked Scarlett’s independence and her desire to help her mentor in return.

The end did feel a bit contrived — well, more than a bit; I kept expecting there to be a twist that never happened. But I still feel that there is something timeless about the book. It captures so perfectly a certain pivotal moment in Scarlett’s life, and one that I think a lot of readers can relate to, even if their pivotal moments were catalyzed by a less idiosyncratic force than Mrs. Amberson.

GRADE: A

I say oh sure, but there are plenty of other reasons to love curling!

1. Teflon shoes. On ice. These people have balance like nobody’s business.
2. Hardcore sweeping: you’ve never seen anyone wield a broom-like instrument with such fierce intensity.
3. Basically any sport is physics and geometry in action. But curling foregrounds its scientific basis! Transfer of momentum, friction, calculating angles and spin — and again, let me emphasize, on ice. Everything’s better on ice! High school physics and geometry teachers, take note.
4. Anyone can play. I mean, maybe not anyone can play at the Olympic level, but it’s a hell of a lot more achievable than many Olympic sports — like snowboarding, for instance, which basically requires that you either grow up in the right terrain or enjoy wealth enough to travel there for months at a time.
5. Being good at, say, speed skating or figure skating requires a certain degree of inborn athleticism. But anyone who understands how to be a good bowler and who has access to a skating rink could become a good “thrower” in curling. And if you can stand up on ice (or learn to), you can learn that hardcore sweeping I was talking about.
6. Like golf, curling was invented by the Scots. This makes me wonder why Scottish people invent such amazing games. “Let’s take this little ball and hit it with sticks toward an invisible hole far out of eyeshot!” “Let’s throw stones across the ice toward a target, and whichever of us has the closest ones to the center wins!” Which leads me to my next point…
7. …No wonder curling is a drinking game. Seriously: you drink beer while you play (I mean, not at the Olympics, so maybe I’m cheating a little bit on why Olympic curling is awesome, but still!). It’s like bowling on ice! Tell me that’s not a kickass sport.
8. Finally, Beatles fans can amuse themselves (and me) by referring to the rock as “a fiendish thingy”:

So there you go: my reasons why curling is awesome. If you flip past it on TV, give it a chance! You might find it as weirdly compelling as I do. :)

Orb, 2007 ed. Click to embiggen.

Some alchemy happened about 75 pages into Freedom & Necessity. I went from forcing myself slowly onward (my previous attempt to read the book ended at page 60) to being unable to put it down. I love Susan most of all, but the other three main characters — James, Kitty, and Richard — are also well-drawn and extremely likable, even though James began the book as a thoroughgoing assclown.

Mild spoilers after the jump!

Susan and James have become a favorite literary couple. I love Susan because:

• she refuses to marry James because marriage means relinquishing too many rights
• she is a crack shot and a splendid rider
• she is extremely intelligent
• she is also both level-headed and ballsy
• she is independent and proactive

And I love James because he adores those qualities about her, and he proposes marriage every year just because he loves her and not because he wants to convince her to go against her principles. James, I think, owes a great deal to both Lymond and Lord Peter Wimsey, which of course explains why I like him so very much. Susan, meanwhile, owes a bit to Harriet Vane, but mostly just manages to be awesome all on her own.

Kitty, too, defied my expectations. Because she experiments with opium to bring on psychic visions, at the beginning I thought she would end up as the sort of one-note superstitious mystic that I always find so tiresome (and so stereotypical). But instead she turned out to be the one whose flashes of insight often produced the best ideas — not through magic, but just through the synthesis of information.

To have not just one but two such strong and clever female characters — and to have their friendship so prominently modeled — sets this book apart from so many others that act as if female friendship can’t exist or speak about anything interesting. And to have this book set in the nineteenth century and deal explicitly with women’s rights (Wollstonecraft gets explicit mentions!) makes it more feminist than most books set in the present.

And here’s where I get all grad-studenty! Just for one sentence, though. :) The emphasis on Hegelian dialectic also cleverly models the authors’ own collaboration. I’m sure it would indicate other cleverness if I had more than a fleeting impression of what Hegel actually wrote. As it is, I’m judging based on half-remembered snippets from my first term of graduate school and various bits of German philosophy that I was assigned as an undergraduate.

Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by my second effort to read the book!

GRADE: A–