Slugging and Sleeping

I don't know why I haven't heard of Miller-McCune before, but it seems like a fantastic magazine/site. The surprisingly long article on Slugging held my attention to the last. Over the past few years living in Europe I discovered the joys of ridesharing, aka carpooling, and have lamented its absence in the USA. Everyone here has a car; no one seems to want to share his car with strangers. We don't like nor trust strangers here. I'm a trustworthy, semi-likable stranger without a car, people! Stop shutting me out.

Quite different from the typically longer-distance sharing that happens in Europe, it turns out DC and San Francisco are a couple of places that have had a strange ridesharing system for over 30 years. Irked by traffic jams and HOV lanes, it is workers in and around these two major cities that have casually organized a better way. Talk about an awful name, though, "slugging." Here's the suggested origin story:

When LeBlanc moved to the area in the mid-1990s, slugging was already entrenched. It was born alongside the I-395 HOV in the 1970s. According to the slugs’ creation story, drivers quickly realized they could get people in their cars and qualify for the new lanes by poaching waiting passengers from bus stops. Bitter bus drivers are credited with coining the term “slug,” originally a derogatory reference that has been amiably reappropriated.

"Slug" doesn't sound like it refers to anything specific about the practice, and I have a hard time believing bus drivers would use such a tame insult...am I missing some historical connotation there? I'll have to ask my family and friends in DC if they've heard of this system, which sounds really cool but also so specific to the surrounding layout and circumstances that it would be impossible to try to export it. But these are the cases that give hope that even Americans can change their travel habits if under enough time or cost pressure.

After spending an inordinate amount of time reading this fascinating piece, I was drawn to A Day in the Life of a Sleepy Student, which will please Stasia, who is incensed at the early start of a high schooler's day (seriously: ask her). I haven't made it all the way through yet, since the screen is starting to make my eyes burn and I need to get the word out here before I burrow squintingly back into my mole-hole for the evening, but I like what I've read so far and I'll certainly be exploring the Miller-McCune site in more depth soon.

The articles are massive, which is sometimes a turn-off when I'm reading something on a computer (see: eyes burning), but they're interesting, well-written, and most importantly they aren't spread out across 5 or 10 pages but rather contained on a single, very tall page. Web sites aren't subject to the space restrictions of the printed page, but sites like The Washington Post and Slate insist on making me load multiple pages for each piece I try to read, which is possibly a way of suggesting more length/depth than actually exists and is certainly a way of maximizing page views (Slate even goes so far as to automatically refresh its pages every minute or so in its quest to inflate its numbers).

Slideshows and multiple-page articles are infuriating and unnecessary and should go the way of AOL's cd-mailing bombardment and other relics of an age when "the Internet" and its benefits were completely misunderstood. Make the piece as long as it takes, utilizing the magic of the web, and let me use my handy scroll wheel to read it without interruptions. I'm more likely to finish it, revisit it, and discuss it if I can easily search and access the entire piece this way. You can slap ads up and down both sides of the page, I don't care; just don't ruin my reading experience or I won't keep reading. Though it could do without the awkward, hyphenated name, Miller-McCune seems to understand what it takes to captivate a reader.

We're Here, We're Queer, We Don't Want Any More Bears!

If I hold up a sign tomorrow with that slogan on it, do you think the Germans will get the Simpsons reference? Probably not, and then they'll be torn over the message -- "'Queer'? 'bears'? well wait just a minute here." In fact Germans seem to want more polar bears but fewer brown bears. Maybe they just want their bears carefully stored in zoos. Pfft. Ask Poland how bears should be handled: they should have open air enclosures by the side of busy streets in the middle of a city like Warsaw with only a waterless moat separating them from sweet, sweet human flesh. Yes, that exists.

Either way, that's not my point. My point is I'm going to be demonstrating tomorrow with my school, and I'm excited to wave signs around, assuming they give me a sign (they'd be crazy not to -- I bet if I hold up a sign they'll see it from the International Space Station).

The issue, essentially, is this: my school, the Gutenberg Gymnasium, goes from grade 5 to grade 13. Gymnasium is the highest level of school in the German school system for those grades -- it's college track, whereas the other two types are not. As such, most parents want their kids to go to gymnasium, and they're allowed to send their kids to gymnasium if they choose, regardless of any recommendations to the contrary.

Therein lies one problem: the Gutenberg Gymnasium, for example, is designed to take on four new classes each year. For some years now, though I don't know how many years, the school has been over capacity with between five and six new classes coming in each year. I think in return for taking this overflow, my school got a new sport hall (I'd say "gymnasium" but that would get confusing with the name of the school, so I'll stick to the literal German translation) and a sort of auditorium.

Nevertheless, it's easy to see that the school is too full. There aren't enough classrooms, so other rooms not intended for classes have been invaded to make up the difference, and let me tell you, 33 kids in a small room is not ideal.

And now it turns out that -- surprise, surprise -- there is another huge jump in numbers coming. Has the city been preparing by (a) building a new gymnasium, (b) expanding the existing schools, or (c) seeing how far they can spit watermelon seeds? If you picked (a) or (b) then you've never heard of a lumbering mess commonly referred to as "a bureaucracy" (and if you picked (c), I appreciate your cynicism but can't verify it...yet).

So the solution, once again, is to add more classes, particularly to the Gutenberg Gymnasium and one other school. My school is expected to handle seven classes for the next two years, and in return will get some extra classrooms built, or whatever is being vaguely promised. Naturally the teachers, students, and parents are up in arms over this. The most aggravating parts of the deal are that the plan was formed and is close to moving ahead without taking into consideration the voices of the teachers, students, or parents; and that there is still no real plan for the future, meaning there's no way of knowing for sure if this will end after two years. Also, the three directors at the school, who get the only votes for the entire school, said they'll no matter what the teachers, students, and parents think, they'll vote Yes to the plan to have seven classes in return for some additions to the school.

Being the cool-headed negotiator that I am, I suggested a strike. This doesn't affect me, but I'd be so excited to be part of a strike anyway. But that's not allowed: German teachers are state workers, which means that in return for jobs-for-life and good benefits, they don't get any say in what happens. So instead, as I mentioned ages ago at the beginning of this long-winded post, we're demonstrating tomorrow afternoon.

When I was in Freiburg in 2005, I saw but missed out on participating in university student protests against the introduction of tuition. I am not missing out on this protest. I hope I don't get whomped by riot police.