Beginning With A Bi-Modal Distribution

Three things: One for the youth, born full of hope/One for the blogger, indiscreetly wise/One for the prof, at the end of his rope/One post to join them all, where the shadow lies.

First, the oldest nephew blew through Kitsilano on Sunday on his way to Point Grey and the heartstoppingly beautiful campus of the University of British Columbia.

From Alaska-in-Pictures.com. Why? Because this is one of  the  great things you see on an Alaskan cruise. Book yours today!

That's 29 years, give or take a day, after I did the same thing. I've every reason to hope that he'll do better than me (first year flunk-out become History PhD working at a grocery store), but if you have a somewhat underemployed failed-intellectual uncle living in a garret,* you better damn well know that he's going to be looking out for you as best he can. And while hitherto failed-intellectuals have been content to observe the world, the point, rather, is to change it. By posting on their blogs. Tremble, ye kings and potentates, for I wield Blogspot, and am over-caffeinated!

Second, Brad Delong, driven to distraction by the intractably high unemployment rate, chanced to utter the secret that we generally keep from nice young boys like my nephew: that getting a job depends far more on who you know than how hard you try. Third, there is Paul Campos on the "law school scam." I've linked to a short post at Lawyers, Guns and Money in my Tolkien pastiche above, but he goes on at much greater (and fully justified length) here. So I'm going to put it all together with an insight from an earlier round of the same discussion. Specifically, it is hard for most beginning lawyers to repay their student loans, because the claimed high average pay of beginning lawyers in fact masks a noncontinuous distribution of incomes. Something's going on here: just check out this attempt to defend these statistics, and the acid comments following.

 Some law students, generally the ones with the highest grades at the Top 20 law schools, get into prestigious legal firms that charge deep-pocket clients very high hourly rates to do their vital work for them. So where you went to school determines your salary. Or, in fact, whether you get any salary for legal work at all. And that's why you get this emergent bimodal distribution of legal incomes.

What I'm here to argue is that this isn't a peculiarity of law school, but rather a much more common phenomenon that plays a crucial role than is obvious in the state of things today. The bimodal distribution isn't a bug. It's a feature. Okay. It's a bug, too. It can be both!

*The self-pity party aside, I actually have a pretty sweet contract. It's just that it took thirteen years for the middle-class pay, benefits, paid time off and generous vacation provisions to vest. The garret's because Kitsilano is expensive. And it's expensive because it's such a nice play to live. You pays your money...

Chapter 8: Below The Surface

Below the fold. Note that "the mall" gets a name this chapter, Panther Heights. And West Philadelphia's local malls have been in trouble for a while due to competition from the King of Prussia megamall.

....

I'm such a clever Austrophile. (Explaining your jokes makes them even funnier!)

Edit: Also, I can't count. (2+3+3)x2=16.

Chapter 7: Amy's Revenge

Below the fold. I haven't figured out how to make Google Blogs do first line paragraph indents. Hence the annoying line breaks between paragraphs instead of denoting indentation.

July, Birthdays and Bigger Things

You can see Hornby Island from my mother's place, poking around the corner of Denman Island. I don't have photos. I can make them, now, because I haz joined the 21st Century and got a smartiephone. Now all I need is smarts! Or time to learn how to use the phone. Or fewer excuses. You take your choice of reasons. (The smart money is on the last.)

So I stole a picture!

Stole it from here!

About the same angle, shot from a great deal closer. You take the ferry to Vancouver Island, then you take another ferry to Denman Island, then you take another ferry to Hornby. Sounds easy enough, but imagine the worst three connection bus trip you've ever been on (no, not Greyhound, that's too horrible), and that's what a three connection ferry trip is like. Except that you can do your waiting in bars and cafeterias, which is better than hanging around at the bus stop. Though that might be a bit of torture for young men trying to live on what musicians make.

It's hard to imagine a worse venue for a music festival. It's just such a drag to get there. Or maybe it's the best venue, because the journey is the destination. But I'm going to go with the former. The audience there might be enthusiastic, but it's also small. Hard to imagine so much enthusiasm after such a long trip, but maybe they were waiting for the band. Maybe, for once, they got there before she was gone.

I went on the ferry to celebrate my birthday, to my mother's house, a place just south of the ferry landing for Denman. It was just past her birthday, and not that far from my aunt's, come to that. And my brother marked the occasion by bringing his wife and as many of my other set of nephews and niece (Hi, Katy, if you ever read this!) as he could. The eldest was absent, working at a grocery store. The second-eldest went to see Harry Potter with his girlfriend and worked a closing shift that night. Because when you're young, you can do that. He also showed me how to do some things with my new iPhone. My brother has been to Denman Island, and so has the second-eldest.

There's irony to knowing that both of the older boys have summer jobs in the grocery business. And there's a sense of Death's grey wings brushing by, knowing that the eldest will be at university in less than a month.

I never took the turn for the ferry to Denman Island, although I've been there, on Pearl's boat. If I'd listened to her when I was as young as these musician boys, maybe I would have. Everything would have been different.

Or maybe not. I've no wisdom to offer about that. Only regrets that I didn't see more of three nephews and a niece in these last five years, and hope that I'll see more of them in years to come Maybe I'll even make the ferry to Denman.  Maybe I'll find someone waiting there for me.

Chapter 6: Long Weekend

Below the fold, with apologies to James Tiptree, Junior. In modern Buddhism, Pure Lands are not in the  eschatological future, but I think that wasn't the case in the 600s.

Chapter 5: Meet the Faculty

Below the fold. Edit: now Mr. Wong's car doesn't change makes. Hmm. Transformer car? Nah.

Chapter 4: The Party Puffin

More self indulgence below the fold. "Sarah Benton."