The Sampler: 4.2.16

In this week's edition of the Saturday Sampler I've got college, clutter, canines and coding on the brain. Hope you enjoy!

The Absurdity of College Admissions from The Atlantic

The types of teens who are awaiting college admissions letters this Spring will most likely live seven or eight full decades on this Earth. And  with that entire lifespan awaiting them, we've got them convinced that they can fundamentally succeed or fatally fail by their 18th birthday.  We turned college admissions into a blood sport and now we're surprised that the kids are most certainly not alright. As this article lays out, the huge widening in the pool of potential college applicants post-GI Bill radically altered who could even consider a college career. 

The college rat race that emerged has left a generation of kids coming of age knowing that each of their actions should be specifically targeted to please faceless, unknowable panels of middle aged committee members sitting at our nation's finest universities. Believing that playing along with the rat race for 12 academic years is the only way to secure a successful future stunts growth and creativity.  This article (stay tuned because it's a 3 part series) scratched an itch left in January by this quote from Margo in John Green's Paper Towns. 

"Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.” 

― John Green, Paper Towns

The Privilege of Clutter from The Atlantic

If I'm murdered in the next month, rest assured that I deserved it for genuinely asking if a colander, socks, and a trash bin were sparking enough joy in my life. 

As someone who just started attempting to Konmari my life (no joke, if Marie Kondo starts a cult you'll find me measuring the Kool Aid in the back), I'm ashamed to admit that I gave little thought to the fact that clutter isn't just about hoarding unwanted crap that has outlived its usefulness. There is cultural and socioeconomic weight and experience behind the very concept of "clutter." This article really captures the way that when we talk about mastering clutter in America, we're often idolizing a higher plane of self-control by proving that we have power over possessions. However, this completely disregards the life experience and emotional baggage of those who have never been well-resourced enough to meet their actual needs, let alone the unintended extras known as "clutter".

Yellowstone Wolf Wars by National Geographic

This one's a bit of a blast from the past from Nat Geo, but bear with me! It offers a great look at the way that wolves keep the eco system functioning not only in terms of prey vs. predator, but also in terms of plant growth and health in our National Parks. There's also nuance in the presentation of the dramatic changes to the landscape that a resurgence in the wolf population has brought. This may be Nat Geo, but fair consideration is given to the farmers and cattle herders who actually make their living in our heartlands and face devastating herd losses from wolf kills. Coastal liberals may love the romantic return of the wolf, but we understand very little about the well founded reasons that the locals aren't so thrilled.

How One Programmer Broke the Internet by Quartz

Oh, that internet! It's like a highway with occasional bottle necks when we all want to stream the Real Housewives at once, but it's not like it's got genuine structural vulnerabilities, right? We constantly hear that our data is at risk of being compromised by those Chinese hackers, and that there's some sort of secret password protected Dark Web lurking around, but fundamental understanding of the internet itself is pretty rare for those who don't have tech experience. I say this as someone who constantly misunderstands tech, so don't think I'm getting high and mighty over here! I love this article because it clearly illuminates how hugely unstable and patched together the internet's code is (perhaps we can think of it as the internet's infrastructure), and how easy it is to swipe the support beams right out from it's essential bridges. A brief, approachable, and thought provoking read!