On removing words from the undergraduate student vocabulary.

As a result of my fellowship with the Food Justice conference I'm not teaching this term. So, my interaction with undergrads is limited to passing moments. Also, due to my fellowship, I find that I am outside my office rather frequently these days walking to and from the law school. So, I have the opportunity to overhear many conversations (the proximity of the dorms to the law school makes this extremely amusing). I have been exposed to a whole host of exchanges, the majority of which sound something akin to this (which I overheard yesterday):

freshman #1: "hey, did you like do that paper yet?"

freshman #2: "yeah, I like worked on it, for like a little bit, like last night"

freshman #1: "I totally don't know like what I'm going to write"

freshman#2: "yeah, I like had a hard time with the first part, you know, like doing what the teacher said." "I like wrote, um...well, like, you know about the stuff from class." "wow, I like totally don't remember what I said." "and I had a hard time with my notes, because you know, like, how the teacher talks." "but then, I like, talked about that stuff from the book we read, you know like who the characters are and like, what they're doing and like what their saying"

freshman#1: "yeah, that's like a great idea, I hope I can say something like that too in my paper."

...and so on.

Which raises a number of questions for me. This conversation smacks of a lazy mind, I know because I am guilty of it too...I say "fuck" a lot and in place of other equally reasonable (and less offensive) words. But this use of "like" in a range of grammatical positions it was never intended for really bemuses me. Is it that we're so attached to 'soundbite' communication (twitter, facebook, bad television reporting, blogs and whathaveyou) that this is how we talk? Or is it simply the comfort of friendly conversation?
If we removed that one word from the student vocabulary would they cease to be able to describe things? link verbs together? start a sentence? exclaim in commiseration?

Also, does it even matter? Probably not...

I hope I never get one of these...

I walked by an office door yesterday and saw this note pinned to it. Ouch...

Professor and student names removed for privacy...but I will note (happily) that this was not an office in my department.

USDA should put its money where its mouth is.

Marion Nestle recently highlighted on her blog the disparity between the percentage of USDA subsidies that go to certain food sectors and the propaganda of the USDA dietary guidelines. Her brief discussion comes out of a larger study completed by the Produce for Better Health Foundation. The section that I was most interested in (Disconnect between USDA Spending Priorities and Public Health Goals) analyzes the extent to which the allocation of USDA spending on the major food groups is congruent with their endorsement of the 2005 dietary guidelines for people living in the US.

The methodology for their statistics on this is interesting (check out page 10-11 of the report), as it is rather difficult (as was pointed out to me by Scott) to compare subsidies to daily food intake. But I think that it is an interesting thought experiment and I was extremely happy to see that they had broken down the information visually.

Wow, look at the blue one. The meat group dominates spending, as does the grain group (a double whammy, as it were, as the majority of subsidized grain in the US goes to meat production), the only close to reality spending versus advocacy is in dairy and fats.

The beauty of irony.

My phone rang last night--an exciting event all on its own, since I rarely pick it up, people have stopped calling...
It was exciting news on the other line, my good friends had just had the ultra sound appointment for determining their baby's sex...they are expecting a boy!

What was so fabulous about this phone call (besides the good news) was that my girlfriend pointed out that she had to call me to tell me because I wouldn't see it on facebook.
...I have thus determined that my anti-social behavior has actually caused me to be more social...