Well after two years and over 500 posts I have decided to retire Ten Things I Think. While I really enjoy putting this site together and would love to be able to keep some version of it going, now that I’m back in America and am about to start my first year of law school, I lack both the time and perspective that have allowed me to sustain this blog in the way that I have.
At the same time I also believe that there are easier and more efficient ways for me to vocalize my opinions and maintain a presence on the web. Going forward I plan to use Twitter to post pictures, life updates, links to stories that interest me, and random comments on current events. You can follow me @CooperKnowlton and if you’re not yet a Twitter user I encourage you to join. I’m sure I will also put stuff up from time to time on Facebook and I’m going to join Google+ this week so I might use that as well.
It’s been a lot of fun over these last two years. Thank you all for your interest and support.
1. I’m Bacccckkkkkkk – That’s right, the Peace Corps adventure is over and I’m back in the good old US of A. It’s still a little strange being back in New York City and it’s definitely going to be awhile before I get my head around the fact that my life in Cambodia is over, but it’s great to be home and it’s great to have the whole family back together again.
2. Summer Schedule - I’m in America so I’m technically home, but that doesn’t mean there will be any unpacking or settling down anytime soon. It will be at least another month and a half until I can do any of that. Here’s what the next six weeks are going to look like…
New York/Atlantic City – July 18 – July 29
Amherst – July 29 -30
Denver – August 1-4
Jackson Hole, Wyoming – August 4 – 14
Denver – August 14 – 21
Ann Arbor – August 22
3. China – My trip to Beijing was way too short, but that city definitely left a big impression on me. I would love to figure out a way to get back to China and to see more of the country. I would also love to figure out a way to learn Mandarin, but that is probably not the type of challenge I should take up during my first year of law school. Maybe in a couple of years…
4. The iPhone 4 – After two years rocking the old school Nokia, I’m almost overwhelmed by the iPhone 4. The whole world of App’s is completely new to me and I pretty much had to have my brother set up the entire thing. I also don’t have any of your numbers, so shoot me an e-mail so I can add you to my fancy list of contacts.
5. Welcome Home – It doesn’t get much more American than Harry Potter in Times Square. The crying baby and the women who yelled, “SHUT your FU*KING baby up,” really made it the perfect reintroduction to America.
6. Law School Economics – How many articles can the NYT possibly run on law school economics and the terrible job prospects for new lawyers? After reading Law School Economics: Ka-Ching! and talking to my friend Mike yesterday about his job search, I’m starting to realize that even if things improve, three years from now finding a job is still going to be tough.
7. Asian Pride – I admit it, I was rooting for Japan on Sunday. Maybe I would have felt differently if I had been in the country and seen some of the games, but I only watched the last half hour of the finals and I couldn’t have been happier to see the Japanese women come away with the win. After the year that country has had and the comeback that that team put together, I don’t see how anyone could root against them.
8. Elizabeth Warren for Senate – I still don’t understand why Obama didn’t pick Elizabeth Warren to lead the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The Republicans are going to try to block whoever Obama nominates so why not pick the best person for the job? That being said, if Warren decides to run for the Massachusetts Senate and she manages to knock off Scott Brown, Obama will have made a brilliant move. I guess we will have to wait and see.
9. Bachmann’s Headache - ”The Minnesota Republican frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can ‘incapacitate’ her for days at time. On at least three occasions, Bachmann has landed in the hospital as a result. … ‘When she gets ‘em, frankly, she can’t function at all. It’s not like a little thing with a couple Advils. It’s bad,’ the adviser says. ‘The migraines are so bad and so intense, she carries and takes all sorts of pills. Prevention pills. Pills during the migraine. Pills after the migraine, to keep them under control. She has to take these pills wherever she goes.” (Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use allege) I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have this person in charge of our Nukes.
10. Best News of the Week - And finally for all the nostalgic children of the 90′s, this morning the NYT has some good news: “Starting next Monday, TeenNick, part of the Nickelodeon family of cable channels for children, will start rebroadcasting old series from the 1990s that are considered classics by young adults. That’s right: classics from the 1990s…he repeats will run between midnight and 4 a.m. under the title “The ’90s Are All That,” a reference to one of Nickelodeon’s most popular shows in that decade, “All That.” That sketch comedy show (1994 to 2005) is one of the first to be featured in the block, along with the sitcoms “Clarissa Explains It All” (1991 to 1994) and “Kenan & Kel” (1996 to 2001) and the cartoon “Doug” (1991 to 1994).”
1. The Wall - “He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man.” – Mao Zedong. So I guess I’m a true man now? Does it matter that I have no money and only one pair of boxers?
2. Peace and Quiet – I always imagined the Great Wall as this quiet and peaceful place. Boy was I wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a more crowded place in my life. There were times yesterday where it felt like I was walking through Grand Central Station at rush hour.
3. Beijing Architecture - The CCTV building is incredible. So is the Bird’s Nest. But there are unique and interesting buildings everywhere you look in this city. Barcelona is the only other city I’ve visited that compares.
4. Crappy Photos – I’ve taken a lot of pictures over the last couple of days, but with the smog they end up looking pretty crappy….
5. Alone Time - I’m happy I stopped here. I’m happy I got to see Beijing. I’m happy I got to have a couple of days to myself. But after three days here I’m really ready to get home. If there is one thing this trip has taught me it’s that I’m not good at traveling alone. Three days…
6. Rave Run – Running through a completely empty Tiananmen Square at 9:30 at night has got to be one of the coolest running experiences I’ve ever had. It was honestly surreal. I kept waiting for someone to tell me I shouldn’t be there, but I just kept running and nothing happened.
7. Food Photos – The food here is amazing. It might even be better than the food at Chengdu on Route 46 in Clifton, New Jersey. But I’ve never been interested in anyone else’s food photos or meal descriptions and so… I’ll spare you mine.
8. BLOCKED – No Facebook in China. No YouTube or Twitter either. I guess I’ll have to keep my complaints about the Chinese Government to WordPress.
9. Now That’s What I Call Music – In preparation for my return to America, I’ve spent the last couple of days catching up on all the pop music I’ve missed over the last two years. The biggest surprise though has been discovering how many of the songs I liked to in Cambodia were knocked off of American songs I had never heard before. I mean who knew “On the Floor” wasn’t originally written in Khmer?
10. No News – I can’t remember the last time I was this checked out. I have no idea what’s going on in the world this week. Anything I should know?
1. It’s a Chinese World, We’re Just Living in It – This place is insane. Maybe it’s because I’m traveling alone or maybe it’s because I just came from Cambodia, but walking around today I really felt like I was in another world. Beijing is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been.
2. A Country Boy in the Big City - After dumping half of my clothes in the airport yesterday I arrived in this city with one pair of dirty khaki pants, two pairs of $5 Cambodian shorts, one polo-shirt, and a few t-shirts that have all seen better days. I’d probably be fine with that for a week in Cambodia. Here I’m a scrub.
3. Day One – Tiananmen Square: check. The Forbidden City: check. The Lama Temple: check. Trying to squeeze everything into five days is already exhausting.
4. English vs. Development – I’ve been surprised how feel people speak English here. You would think that the more developed a place is the more likely you would be to find English speakers, but I think that in Asia the exact opposite is true. In Phnom Penh everyone speaks English, in the cities I visited in Vietnam and Indonesia there were some English speakers, but not a lot. In Beijing (from what I’ve gathered in a day) it feels like there’s nobody.
5. The Rest of the Week – Tomorrow morning I’m heading outside of the city to check out the Great Wall and on Friday I’m going to go on an architectural tour of the city. I’m especially excited to see the CCTV building after having just read this review of the building in the New York Times: “The CCTV headquarters may be the greatest work of architecture built in this century. Mr. Koolhaas, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, has always been interested in making buildings that expose the conflicting energies at work in society, and the CCTV building is the ultimate expression of that aim, beginning with the slippery symbolism of its exterior. At moments monumental and combative, at others strangely elusive, almost retiring, it is one of the most beguiling and powerful works I’ve seen in a lifetime of looking at architecture.” (Koolhaas, Delirious in Beijing)
6. Chinese Food – My first meal in China: Starbucks. My second meal in China: Subway. I’m going to branch out a bit tonight and look for some real Chinese food. I hope I can find some General Tso’s Chicken.
7. Running Slump – I’ve run once in the last four days and I doubt that I’m going to get in any quality training while I’m in Beijing. The smog here is way worse than I thought it would be and from what I’ve seen it doesn’t look like there are too many good places to run. Maybe it’s time to start trying to coming up with a slightly less ambitious marathon goal. 116 days.
8. Travel Wish List – Now that I can technically say that I’ve “been to China” my lifetime list of countries stands somewhere around 25 or 26. That means that there are still somewhere around 170 countries that I have yet to visit. Out of those 160, here are the ten that I’m the most anxious to get to…
Israel
Japan
Greece
Cuba
Iraq
Brazil
Turkey
Russia
India
Mexico (sometimes I think I’ve been to Mexico? I’m pretty sure I haven’t though)
9. The Resident – I haven’t read anything in the last couple of days and the only thing I watched recently was The Resident, which I saw on the plane. Why I watched it I have no idea? Probably the worst movie Hillary Swank has ever made.
10. The Final Cooper in Cambodia Photo Shoot – Here’s the final photo shoot from my last night in Cambodia. It’s weird that this was only 48 hours ago. It already feels a long way away…
After showing up late at the airport (I had to wait for my Cambodian family to get ready), discovering that my airline doesn’t allow more than 20kg of checked baggage (I had 57kg), and one the worst flights of my life (I honestly thought it was all over there for a second) I’ve finally arrived in Beijing. At some point during the trip my computer charger also broke so I don’t have enough battery to post anything tonight. Hopefully I’ll get my life together tomorrow and I’ll have enough time to get a real post up. Stay tuned…
1. The Last Day – Well the bank account has been closed, the stool sample has been delivered, and I just finished up all my paperwork and left the Peace Corps office for the final time. Now I’m getting ready for the “last supper” with my Cambodian family and I’m off to the airport in the morning…
2. Emotions - I still haven’t really gotten my head around the fact that I’m leaving Cambodia tomorrow. The last couple of days have been so busy and right now it still feels like I’m just in Phnom Penh for another random weekend. I don’t think it will all really sink in until tomorrow when I’m on the plane. All I know is that I’m happy that I have a week to myself in China to really process everything.
3. On China – In preparation for my trip to China I’ve been reading Henry Kissinger’s new book On China. I’ve been pretty distracted this week and am only about a third of the way through, but so far so good. I particularly like the way in which Kissinger contrasts the “grand strategies” of China and America. This is how the New York Review of Books describes it…
Kissinger’s reflections about the Western and Chinese concepts of strategy lead him to posit a stark distinction, one in which “the Chinese ideal stressed subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage,” while “the Western tradition prized the decisive clash of forces.” It is a good way for Kissinger to prepare the reader for a dualistic approach to two vast philosophical and military traditions, which he begins by summarizing the key differences between the Chinese players of the board game weiqi (the Japanese go) and those favoring the contrasting game of chess. While chess is about the clash of forces, about “decisive battle” and the goal of “total victory,” all of which depend on the full deployment of all the pieces of the board, weiqi is a game of relative gain, of long-range encirclement, which starts with an empty board and only ends when it “is filled by partially interlocking areas of strength.”
Teachers and practitioners of grand strategy have studied these contrasts between the two for many centuries. The principles of weiqi are echoed in the haunting text known as The Art of War, by a certain Master Sun, writing around the same time as Confucius. Kissinger quotes Sun at some length, drawing especially on his insights into the concepts of “indirect attack” and “psychological combat.” (“One could argue,” says Kissinger, “that the disregard of [Master Sun’s] precepts was importantly responsible for America’s frustration in its recent Asian wars.”) As the talented translator of classical Chinese John Minford renders one of the maxims by Master Sun quoted by Kissinger:
Ultimate excellence lies
Not in winning
Every battle
But in defeating the enemy
Without ever fighting.Master Sun succinctly lists his favored tactics for success in order of their priorities and effectiveness: first on the list is an all-out attack on the enemy’s strategy, second comes an attack on his alliances, then comes an attack on his armies, followed by an attack on his cities. “Siege warfare,” says Master Sun, “is a last resort.”
4. “Most Likely to Run For Office… ” – In this months edition of Mango Dreams, the Peace Corps volunteer newsletter, a group of volunteers published a list of PCV superlatives. My superlative: “Most likely to run for office… only to drop out do a scandal.” I’m not sure what to make of that, but I guess it’s a decent prediction. We will have to wait and see.
5. (Half) Ironmen - A big congratulations to Courtney and Terence who finished the Amica Ironman 70.3 (a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run) yesterday in Providence, Rhode Island. Pretty damn impressive guys. Well done.
6. A Quote - And finally one of my favorite all time quotes…. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” – Beryl Markham
1. The Long Goodbye – Well I thought that leaving my village was going to be the hardest part of this goodbye process, but now it looks like my entire family and a group of my students are coming into Phnom Penh on Tuesday to take me to the airport. Perfect. What could be better than a second chance to cry in front of everyone.
2. On the Bright Side – I will miss a lot about my Cambodian life, but there are a few things that I’m really happy to have finally put behind me, such as…
bucket showers
shaving with a flashlight
having to walk downstairs and out into the backyard to get to the bathroom
Khmer coffee
getting chased by dogs
running out of money on my phone
wiping with my hand
burning trash
rice, rice, and rice
3. Sweet 16 – At an American Sweet 16 you get kids grinding and sneaking sips of beer in the bathroom. In Cambodia you get this. If I have girls, I’m sending them to Cambodia for high school.
4. The Scum of the Earth - Rarely do I get really angry here, yet when a group of white guys on motorcycles drove through my town going around 100 mph the other day, I felt some of my New York rage coming back to me. I’m looking forward to getting some of that bottled up anger back.
5. Treme Season Two – I didn’t think it was possible for season two to be even slower than season one, but after six episodes I’m still waiting for something to happen. I don’t know why I’ve stuck with this show. I think I’m still waiting for some of that Wire genius from David Simon. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen.
6. Quote/Stat of the Day -“Today, the state with the lowest obesity rate would have had the highest rate in 1995.” – Jeff Levi, Ph.D.
Also this: “Twenty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15 percent. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have obesity rates over 25 percent, and just one has a rate lower than 20 percent.” (F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future)
7. Public Sector Jobs - I thought our countries problems were being caused by Obama’s big government policies? Apparently not. In fact since Obama took office the government has steadily been shedding jobs. Think Progress claims that we have, “500,000 fewer people working for the government since Obama’s inauguration even though the national population is larger than it used to be.”
So when FDR took office the government created programs like the CCC, the CWA, the TVA, the WPA that put people back to work. When Obama took office the government cut 500,000 jobs. Which sounds better to you?
8. Reforming the School Reformers - In this week’s NYT’s Magazine Paul Tough has written a great little piece about the failure of school reformers to look beyond the classroom: No, Seriously: No Excuses. It’s worth a read…
The reformers’ policy goals are, in most cases, quite worthy. Yes, contracts should be renegotiated so that the best teachers are given incentives to teach in the poorest schools, and yes, school systems should extend the school day and school year for low-income students, as many successful charter schools have done. But these changes are not nearly sufficient. As Paul Reville, the Massachusetts secretary of education, wrote recently in Education Week, traditional reform strategies “will not, on average, enable us to overcome the barriers to student learning posed by the conditions of poverty.” Reformers also need to take concrete steps to address the whole range of factors that hold poor students back. That doesn’t mean sitting around hoping for utopian social change. It means supplementing classroom strategies with targeted, evidence-based interventions outside the classroom: working intensively with the most disadvantaged families to improve home environments for young children; providing high-quality early-childhood education to children from the neediest families; and, once school begins, providing low-income students with a robust system of emotional and psychological support, as well as academic support.
9. 3000 - As much as I love Derek Jeter, I’m rooting hard for a week-long slump so that I can be America when he hits 3000. With All Star Break this week it just might be possible, yet regardless of when it happens it will be a great moment for one of my all time favorites.
10. Running in NYC – And finally, for all you running nerds out there, you gotta watch the PUMA video series on Delilah Dicrescenzo. Dicrescenzo lives in trains in NYC. She was also the inspiration for the Plain White T’s song, Hey There Delilah. The videos are really well shot and worth watching– especially if you’re in NYC.
Well after two years and over 500 posts I have decided to retire Ten Things I Think. While I really enjoy putting this site together and would love to be able to keep some version of it going, now that I’m back in America and am about to start my first year of law school, I lack both the time and perspective that have allowed me to sustain this blog in the way that I have.
