harpojaeger.com

Lacking the motivating force of school as a timekeeper is making it difficult for me to coalesce my thoughts into an actual blog post.  I still have plenty to write about, but it’s less natural to write about it.  I think this will be responsible in part for some shifts in the way I approach this site in the coming months.

That being said, I do have some pretty interesting stuff to write about.  Today me and my friend presented our honors project to the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers class back at high school (remember that place?).  It was cool to be back there – for the first time since graduation.  I felt out-of-place already.  I’ve moved on, and new people have taken my place.  And that’s as it should be.  People shouldn’t waste their time and effort hanging on to lingering memories.  I want to be remembered, but I don’t want to be canonized (not that I expect to be) or overly retained.  So I sort of felt as though I was injecting myself back into the lives and routines of people who I should be leaving alone.  But it was nice to see them, and people were happy to see me, so I felt okay about it.  Also, the presentation went really well.  Originally, it was going to consist of a lecture by the two of us, and a simulation we designed to demonstrate some of the economic principles we dealt with in the project.  However, we ended up doing the project later than we had expected, and we only had about an hour for the whole thing.  So, last night we designed an extremely stripped-down version of the simulation with the intent of demonstrating Gresham’s Law, a simple but extremely important principle.  The simulation worked PERFECTLY.  We hadn’t had time to test it out on our own by playing it a couple times, but it went exactly as we had hoped.  We created a small system for buying and selling commodities (corn and iron [represented by corn kernels (intended for burning for ethanol) and steel hex nuts]) and a system for switching between gold and silver bullion (raw metal).  The commodities could be bought and sold in either gold or silver, creating a ratio between the two (simulating the effect a government-regulated currency would have), but the bullion exchange forum (representing goldsmiths, a historically accurate and important figure), operated on its own terms (historically speaking, according to the amounts of bullion available).  This creates an imbalance, and allows people to make a profit by exchanging currencies.  By manipulating the prices of the commodities and the bullion ratio available at the goldsmith station, we were able to force one currency entirely out of circulation.  We did this both ways; we first started with silver being hoarded and gold spent, and within the span of about two turns, we turned it around entirely.  We also employed paper currency for silver at the commodity stations, adding a twist, as it could be used to buy and sell, but not to exchange for bullion.  Also historically accurately, the winner had an extremely wide margin, almost three times the amount of money as the loser.  Our simulation elegantly proved Gresham’s Law, and also sort of proved capitalism too; that the more money you have the more you can make.  So that was a great success.

Also speaking of money, now that I have a debit card, Mint.com, which I was already using, has become vastly more useful.  I am starting to be able to track how much money I spend on what, and set budgets.  Within the next few months, I think I’ll gain a lot of insight into where my money goes, and how to spend it more effectively.  I also figured out that you can add your PayPal account to Mint, which is nifty.

I have been submerging myself in resources on investing.  Right now, I’m leaning towards ShareBuilder for a brokerage, because of their low fees.  Since I’m doing long-term investing, it doesn’t matter that they’re executing trades only once a week at maximum.  However, I’ve realized that I should research direct investing before committing to a brokerage account.  If I can do that effectively, I can avoid a lot of fees.  I would then have to keep track of my own investments, but with the help of Google Finance that shouldn’t be too hard.  I hope to have a substantial amount of money invested and in my planned Roth IRA within a few weeks.

In the grand scheme of things, my family is pretty wealthy.  We a own a house, and rent one floor out, my parents both have jobs, I am going to an expensive college, we have two cars, we eat well, we travel, etc.  Compared even to some people in this immediate area, we are very wealthy.

Today I went to a friend’s graduation at NMH.  Compared to the people there, I felt poor.  There were exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of people there were incredibly wealth.  They were underdressed in the way rich people are.  And you could just tell from the way they conducted themselves.  It gives you a chance to see how the other one-thousandth of a percent live, if you will.

It’s weird.  Right now, the gap between the rich and poor in our nation is the biggest it’s ever been.  It’s like the Gilded Age, or the Roaring Twenties.  But I think that the societal shifts that are being brought about by the economic situation are going to change that.  It really seems to me that the whole culture of American consumerism is changing.  That wealth gap is going to start getting smaller as our education system improves, as urban infrastructure starts to improve, as clean energy begins to redistribute the population.

But for the moment, it’s still startling to consider how poor I am compared to some others.  I’m not feeling sorry for myself; I’m acutely aware of how privileged I am, and I’m fortunate to have the opportunities I do.  But I do think about people less fortunate than myself, and never less than when I’m staring the upper class elite right in the face.

We lost to Amherst JV A today on a universe point; it was 5-5, game to 6.  It was a pretty awesome game.

Tomorrow, I am biking to school (as I did yesterday) with a ton of other people.  It is Community Day, so we have no classes, and there are activities and free food (Chinese and Jamaican) all day.  A friend and I are performing a Talking Heads song at the open mic later.  Then the frisbee team leaves for the St. Johnsbury tournament after school.  That I am really looking forward to.  We’re in the B division, which means that some of our newer players should get to play a bunch more.  It also means that I am planning to win the division, which would be pretty awesome.  The tournament lasts through Sunday.  I will be bringing my megaphone.  Enough said.

Last night I finished the first draft of the one-act I’m writing.  It’s a collaboration between my Playwriting class and my school’s Holocaust Studies class, which I took last year, and will be used, once completed, in the Holocaust Rescue unit.  We read it in class today, and I got some very useful feedback on it.  I am very excited to see how it plays out when completed.  The Holocaust Studies class will do at least one reading of it, hopefully public.  This will be the first time I’ve ever had any of my work read outside of class.  WAHOO!

Calvinball was AMAZING!  There must have been forty people there.  We spent the whole lunch running around, sometimes in a huge group, sometimes in a couple, sometimes with stragglers.  We had people in every grade, and some teachers as well.  We went inside, outside, all over the place.

People took lots of pictures, which will apparently be in the yearbook, or maybe next years’.  The school’s executive director (the principal in normal public school terms) said that this was one of the most notable events in the HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL!

IT WAS AWESOME!

We are going to try to do it at least once more before the end of the year.

We lost to Four Rivers, but that is okay.  Especially because a friend and I have organized a game of Calvinball tomorrow during lunch.  It is going to be awesome.  We have flags, bags, hobby horses, masks, a croquet set, and I am bringing all sorts of other things.

This weekend is the Greenfield ultimate tournament.  We are in the A division again!

My academic load is finally starting to lighten up, for a variety of reasons.  This morning, I turned in my joint honors paper for Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, under the title “British Finance and the Development of the Gold Standard”.  Having that off our backs leaves us with having to plan the simulation we are going to run with the class to demonstrate some of the principles we studied.  Students in the class will take on the role of merchants, buying and selling goods and currency, and attempting to make profit as regulatory and financial systems change.  The simulation is pretty complicated, and we are turning in the plans for it on Wednesday.

I have, after much thought, decided not to do the AP Physics C exams.  There is too much work remaining, and I have not done enough this year.  I’m still going to try to finish my independent math study, but since that doesn’t have an AP exam attached to it, it should be significantly easier.  I will need to kick it into gear, though, because I graduate in less than a month (AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!).  As of Friday, I will be done with Spanish, when I will have my presentation/evaluation with the head of the World Languages department and a Spanish teacher who will be assessing my independent work.  I am expecting that to go well.

Up until now, I’ve been assigned to write a one-act play as a normal part of my Playwriting class, an another one-act for Honors in that class, as a collaboration between the Theater and History departments.  That one-act would be used as a curriculum piece in the Holocaust Studies class in the Holocaust Rescue unit.  However, after consulting with the teachers of those classes (who are the department heads), we’ve decided to make those two one-acts the same.  In other words, the normal one-act I do for Playwriting will be the collaboration.  The Playwriting teacher has also said that if it works well, he will not have a problem giving me Honors Credit, because of the collaboration and research aspects which would not be required in the normal one-act assignment.  Once I get a good plot locked down, it should be pretty easy to write.

We have a Frisbee game tomorrow against Four Rivers.  They are an excellent team.  So are we.  It is going to be an epic game.

Today was the Northampton Pride march and rally.  I took a longish lunch break to march with my school’s GSA, and then got some excellent food, including deep-fried cheesecake, which a friend and I sampled simply so we could say we had.  It was not very good.  The fried plantains and rice were, however.

And now, for the homework.

The HCCPS annual meeting was a great success.  I ended up going with some friends separately from my mom.  Afterwards, we went and got some ice cream (I had a root beer float) at Herrell’s.  It was great to see everyone again, and I really liked being at the meeting.  We talked a bit about ourselves, and our experiences at Hilltown, and then people asked us some questions.  Overall, a wonderful evening.

I have a bunch of homework to finish up, and then I am off to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Tonight I am heading to the Annual Meeting of the Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School, where I attended from fifth through eighth grade.  Some members of my class (the class of 2006) have been asked to come talk about our experiences there, as we are all heading off to college and such places next year.  I am looking forward to seeing a lot of people who I haven’t seen in a while, students and faculty.  The part where we talk is not till about 7:20, but I am going for the whole thing beginning at 6:30.  I have never been to one of these before, and I’m curious to see what goes on.

It’s been a while since I wrote.  I have been very busy and very tired.

The NMH tournament was awesome.  We got destroyed (we were 0 and 5), but we won the Spirit of the Game award, with an unprecedented-at-that-tournament perfect score of 50/50, receiving a 10/10 from each of the five teams we played.  We got a nice plaque, and everything.  After the tournament, me and some friends, including one from NMH, went for a quick dip in the river.

That night I went to a late show at the Iron Horse, Gokh-Bi System.  They are a sort of funk/hip-hop/fusion sort of band, with members from around here, and Senegal.  They were great.  They had three frontmen from Senegal, who would rap, sing, drum and also dance.  They also had this sort of designated dancer dude who would come up onto the stage at certain times and do incredible dances.  We danced a lot in the audience, and people were coming up on stage all the time to dance with the band, and throw money all over them.  It was fabulous.  I think I may buy some of their music from iTunes, now that it is DRM-free.

Sunday I went to see that same friend from NMH’s senior honors recital, which was also fabulous.  He played two pieces with piano accompaniment (on violin and viola), and played viola in the string quartet he wrote.  This was the first time that piece had been performed, and it was really good.  He wrote it mostly this winter, immediately following the unexpected death of a friend from leukemia.

Two other students played at the recital, one on drums, and one on piano.  Both were excellent, and after the show there was a reception with those sort of round wafers with chocolate filling in the middle, and strawberries.  Also there was confectioners’ sugar to dip the strawberries in, which I had never done before, but which was great.

I have been getting very little sleep in the past few nights because of mounds of homework, which will continue tonight.  With that in mind, I will say that Arlen Specter is a very brave soul.

RIP, Frankie Manning.  We will miss you.