Things Fall Apart?

As this semester has progressed the prospect of work for December graduates continued to erode.

At Richmond's career fair in August the booths were bustling with students looking to be hired and professionals, looking to hire. As one of those wide-eyed students, I was pretty excited and felt good about my prospects. As the semester moved on and the Wall Street Journal's economic outlook got darker and darker, the light on my prospects also began to weaken. I came out of the career fair with two solid interviews. However, after an interview I was informed by the companies that they were no longer able to hire new employees due to the economy or that they were revising the roles of the employees they would hire. This was disappointing but if nothing else, I took away plenty of knowledge from the interviews I had - they were somewhat entertaining as well.

Thankfully, I'm not in a position where once I graduate if I don't have a job I don't eat. This knowledge also hasn't helped my job searching as I've been a little less intense than I could have. But, I still worry about those who don't have a buffer they can work from until the economy switches back to hiring mode. More than one person has told me "it's a great time to go to graduate school" and that is what others graduating with me are looking to do. I just don't feel like I would be able to get the most out of grad school yet. I want to experience more before I spend more time in a class room. I want to solve real world problems, I want to work with people. I want to work from 8-5 (or whatever) regularly and see how well I adjust. I've done the academic learning thing for a while - I want to see what else is out there.

Don't fear though, all is not lost for me. Despite my lackadaisical job search I've found and interviewed for a position which I think would be both fascinating, fun, and a great experience and with a company that isn't as subject to the whims of the market as others. Here's hoping that works out!

Life During Hurricane Season

Life in the southeastern US during hurricane season isn't ever a whole lot of fun. With each season comes new worries about the fate of your property and your well being. Who's to say that this year won't be the one that ends life as it is known in your city.

A perfect example of this is with hurricane Katrina in my sophomore year of college. As a freshman, campus was closed for hurricane Ivan the year before and the city only got a little windy. This allowed people to get lulled into a false sense of security. When the next year's devastation came through it was a wake-up call for the entire city. New Orleans is an interesting case though. As it is known today, most of the city is built on swamp. A map from 1901 of the city shows much of Uptown and the French Quarter but the rest of the city is listed as swamp land. The recovery of this swampland into livable areas is partly why the city has to pay so dearly each time a hurricane approaches.

New Orleans desperately needs help if it is to survive. It's not feasible for a city which is a major center of commerce to have a season where nothing is definite. Eventually, business leaders will tire of their constant evacuations and move their companies elsewhere. This will be catastrophic for the city and state economy. This means that the power company for the region (Entergy) needs to get their ducks in a row. Five days following hurricane Gustav customers in Metro New Orleans still don't have power, and the local paper tells them they might have to wait until the end of next week to see it. This is unacceptable. How are businesses expected to operate and be successful when the basic infrastructure can't keep up with their needs?

To remain successful, New Orleans needs reliable hurricane protection and companies managing the infrastructure that know what they're doing or it will sink into it's reputation of being a great party city and nothing else. And that would be tragic.

Housing? What housing?

The more I hear through the media about the “housing bubble” the more frustrated I get. For me, the whole thing seems pretty easy. People bought what they couldn’t afford and now have to pay the consequence. Someone paid too much for a home which is now worth less than they still owe for it.

What’s the deal with this though? I blame two groups. The first and most responsible are the people who bought what was out of their league. I’ve always been taught that something that sounds too good to be true probably is. What makes people think anything different when it comes to getting a home mortgage? If you make $50,000 a year you can’t buy that $300,000 house. I’m sorry but it just doesn’t make sense. Yet, this is part of what puts us in our current predicament. Had these people read and understood what they were signing and thought about it we wouldn’t be in as deep as we are currently. Sure, there’s a lot of fine print and things like “interest only” loans sound like great things. But, failure to understand or ask questions about what you read creates huge problems. Of course, I also blame the American mentality of “Well, we’ll worry about that problem when we get to it” for interest only loans.

The second group responsible for a large part of the problem is the lenders. The same “too good to be true” policy still applies. What good does it do the company to lend to someone who can barely afford the mortgage? Sure, it is great to put someone in a home they “own” but if they can’t afford it the payments this puts a heavier burden on the family than the benefit from owning a home. Greed is a bad thing. That’s my personal motto. These companies gambled and lost due to their desire for more money.

But, now what do we do? While it would be GREAT to be able to say “Well , you shouldn’t have loaned out money to these people” it isn’t something we can do. The problem here is that these companies are so firmly ingrained in our financial system that a collapse of one would create substantially greater problems for the economy. Trading and selling mortgages between companies doesn’t help this predicament as they get bundled into securities which make their way into the stock market. There, some people don’t know what they are signing up for and get screwed. Instead of letting these companies who made poor decisions lay in the bed they made, the government has to come bail them out with huge sums of money. This puts the burden on the government for bad corporate decisions.

All the while, the people at these lending companies are still making their salaries despite the trouble they have caused. The vice-presidents and CEOs of these companies have lost little compared with the people they targeted for lending and will probably get severance packages as they are fired for ruining not only the company but contributing to the downfall of an economy.

Meanwhile, people trying to retire are being hit hard. As the stock market dives investment portfolios tank in value. This is due in part due to a lack of diversification but also due to the general downfall of the US and global markets. I haven’t looked at a statement from my broker since December and I’m glad – I’d probably cry if I saw it. This problem needs a solution, and we need it soon. It’s time for corporate America to step up to the plate and get us out of this quagmire they helped create.

Residence Hall Access Security

There is an article in this week’s Maroon about dorm security. The article supplements a video made by the paper’s staff as they get in to the dorms at Loyola without the required identification and show that it’s not a difficult process. This wasn’t any real surprise of mine but it does expose a pretty important security issue.

What can schools do to increase the safety of their dorms from an entry control stand point? I think the most important thing schools can do is create a single point of entry and exit to all their residence halls. This allows much more control from a physical point of view and also makes the dorms more social since people are forced to interact while approaching that central access point. This is one aspect of student housing that Loyola does an excellent job at. Richmond makes no attempt for its dorms and allows all doors to be used for entry (with student id) and exit.

After the buildings have a single way in and out the next important step is to staff that entrance with a well trained person all the time. Training should include proper procedure as well as the reasoning behind the procedures. Many problems encountered during my stint as an RA resulted from poorly trained work study students not doing their jobs properly. While at the desk a person’s responsibility becomes checking that each individual trying to enter the dorm is allowed to do so. This also involves monitoring visitor check-in and check-out as well as any other responsibilities (Tulane rents movies, Loyola checks out vacuums). As a part of this, residents of the dorms should each have something on their identification which makes it easy to detect whether they are in the right dorm or not at a glance. Loyola used “building stickers” for this purpose with each sticker being a different color. This allowed desk staff to glance at the ID and ensure the student was in the proper dorm.

Another side benefit of having the dorms staffed is that it provides a simple mechanism for problems. If someone crazy does enter the desk assistant can push the panic button. If something breaks the desk assistant can write up the work order. If a roommate is passed out in the hallway the desk assistant should be able to call for assistance. This requires the desk assistant to be given some level of control over their dorm. My biggest complaint while an RA at Loyola was that the dorms failed to empower the desk assistant.

For desk assistants to be able to perform their duties, they need to be able to control the entryway and lobby of the dorm. This means that beyond a certain point in the building, residents should have to walk around the desk through a single choke point that allows each person to be identified. Elevators and stairs to other parts of the building should be located only behind that point. This ensures that everyone going to the rooms has at least walked past the desk. Desks off to the side of a lobby allow ample room for people to sneak around the desk. When well placed desks are given good visibility of the lobby and entryway the likelihood that intruders could be easily detected greatly increases. Well placed desks also thwart potential intruders as they see a more difficult obstacle to gaining entry.

"Free" Software

A week ago a man named Richard Stallman came to University of Richmond's campus and gave a talk about his work with the Free Software Foundation. The "Free" in free software isn't about cost, it's about rights associated with the software. Stallman and his foundation believe that all software users should have:
- The right to run the program for any purpose
- The right to examine and/or change the source code for the program. (So, this requires access to the source code)
- The freedom to redistribute copies as desired.
- The freedom to modify the program and distribute that modification
Stallman is against any software that is not "open source" or, in his word, free.

This sounds pretty cool. We would have access to everything on our computers so that we could learn how everything works, add any features we desired or remove features we didn't like. We could then provide our changes to other people who might want a similar setup.
But, this would mean the end of companies which rely on proprietary software development for revenues. Because, if you want to sell someone software that you've written, but after the sale the code for the program ends up online no one else will buy it, they'll just get it off the Internet.
Despite this, "free" software seems like a pretty neat idea and it could change the way people use their computers. I don't think this is an economically do-able system though.
Some applications require proprietary software to be of any use. For example, if the government has software that can accurately track and shoot down missiles, that's not something we want China to have the code for. With the code, they could learn the software's limitations and exploit those problems before anyone else had discovered them (there is no such thing as an error free program). In a more applicable situation, imagine that you run a medium sized company in a highly competitive market. You are consistently trying to better manage your business to lower your costs and under price the competition. If in house programmers create an integrated management system for your company that you then use to run aspects of your business, it isn't something you'd want to publish the source code for. Publishing the source code would remove any competitive advantage you would have over your competitors that the software provided. Or, if your competitors wanted to they could examine the code and look for vulnerabilities. Finding even one problem with the code could be enough for them to access your system and ruin your business. These are two fundamental problems with open source software on a wide scale from a security stand point.
Another problem with Stallman's point of view is the money problem. In his talk, he spoke of a world where anyone could change the code and redistribute it, fixing problems with it, changing functionality, or whatever. Since all the software is open source, anyone could make these changes. To use an example of his, a high school student that was into coding could learn how to implement the changes in software and make them. The immediate problem I see with this would be the development of a price war. Much like the outsourcing of physical jobs, coding jobs would get delegated to the lowest bidder on a global scale. This would hurt countries with high cost of living as programmers need to make more money to sustain themselves. In another possibility, if a company needed some changes made to their software, what's to stop them from reaching an agreement with a local college to have a class rewrite the code for academic credit? As a company, wouldn't this be a good thing to do? You still get the software, it's probably going to be good since students are being graded on it and it's free.
The free software movement isn't all bad though. I think there are certain applications where open sourced software can be of great use. Open source software is great for basic applications that are common needs for everyone. These include e-mail, document creation, and internet browsers. However, as the software becomes more specialized than the generic variety it becomes more important to keep it in house to protect your business security and investments.

Right to Carry on Campus

In recent weeks, Richmond's student newspaper, The Collegian, has printed many editorials about students' right to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. The Red and Black at UGA has had similar editorials so I guess this is a pretty hot topic right now. With that said, here are my two cents.
I understand the desire to feel safe on a college campus. I can see how people feel that carrying a weapon would provide them with that safety. I don't think the argument follows that carrying a weapon creates (or even fosters) a safer environment. My reasoning behind this is that while the person holding the weapon may feel like they have some tangible defense against something bad happening, a gun really won't do them any good. In fact, I'd argue that it would harm them.
Assuming that the person with the gun is not the person responsible for the shooting, the do-gooders responding to the threat don't help the situation. Their lack of formal "active shooter" training could allow their nerves to take control of their bodies. Without training it would be natural to react to someone running down the hall way trying to get into rooms as the person doing the shooting. This isn't necessarily the case as it might be another student trying to escape the carnage. Or, instinct might tell you that anyone with a gun is the bad guy. But, what if other students also carry weapons and are in a similar hunt for the real shooter? How would you distinguish them from the real shooter? And, once you've made the distinction, do you trust your fellow gun carriers to be able to make the same distinction so you aren't shot in confusion? Even if you only shoot people dressed a certain way (say, wearing black and body armor) that could fail as police begin to enter the building.
Once the decision is made by the police to enter the building, armed students then pose an additional threat. Police now have to (quickly) sort out the law abiding students wanting to do good from the shooter. If the shooter is still moving around the building this identification could waste valuable time.
Armed students (or others) also pose a communication problem. As 911 calls begin to arrive about the situation people may mistakenly view the students responding to the situation as additional shooters. This could yield a situation where police are expecting a team of 5 individuals to be roaming around the building when only 1 exists.
Ignoring the rare possibility that students would be on a campus with a shooting, guns still pose risks. What would occur if one were to misfire during class? Or, if someone were to fall down a flight of stairs? These risks must also be accounted for in any plan that allows people to carry weapons on campus. The security of the weapons when not being carried would also pose a potential problem. If a person licensed to carry a weapon fails to properly secure it all sorts of problems could develop. Their nut job of a roommate could decide to take revenge on a cheating significant others' object of affection. Their drunk roommate could come in late one night and decide to play Russian roulette with the gun. No way exists to stop these from happening as roommates could learn the combination to a safe or the location of keys.
Debating the costs and benefits of carrying concealed weapons on campuses will no doubt be around for a long time and will always have its supporters. Until these supporters can fix the fundamental problems with having a concentrated number of weapons in one place controlled by (mostly) untrained people, the debate won't end. Even if these problems are surmounted it ignores that we already pay people to take care of this sort of thing for us. We even provide these people with highly specialized training so that they can do a really good job when the time comes. We call these people police officers.

First Post

I thought I'd go ahead and create a more serious blog than the one I currently use. The current one is fine for life's stories and thoughts but I thought that as my global view became broader that this might be a better way to express myself. It will also hopefully maintain the separation between public and personal.