Have you ever seen someone trying to teach their baby to talk like Audrey Hepburn? I have.

I saw this woman while fabric shopping last weekend. She was in the ribbons aisle, which is a pretty enclosed space to share with one of the most annoying people in the world. It was sooo obvious she was trying to sound like Audrey, and I had to surmise that the charade (ha ha) was for the benefit of her baby.

She pronounced chocolates like "choke-lits" and strawberries like "straw-bries." Her baby was crying (I was almost in tears as well) but the mother simply spouted niceties such as "now, now, you musn't fuss." It was funny to see the baby whimper for attention and the mother talk to hear the sound of her own voice.

She was clearly American, because the accent wasn't perfect and certain words just didn't come out right. Now, even if the baby grows up sounding like Audrey, which I doubt because children living in another country don't pick up their parents accents much even if they're real, what purpose will that serve? Will it be worth having a mother who sounds like a fool?

This makes me mad.

Not necessarily that Berkeley is using kind of odd criteria for choosing its incoming freshmen. Although it is a public university, and thus has some responsibility to turn out quality college grads for our fine state, I can see why they want a "diverse" student body. It makes Berkeley Berkeley.

The part that makes me mad is that people assume bright students will be just as happy somewhere else. I was a lot like the girl in the article from ML who got rejected. I got a 1490. If I hadn't gotten into Berkeley, I would have been very disappointed. For one, it was my first choice. While I may have been able to go to some other Ivy League school, the fact is I didn't want to. (Can you imagine me playing tennis at Princeton?) I'm sorry that Berkeley is the "one shot" (hello Eminem?) for some disadvantaged kids. Guess what? It's not just kids from the ghetto who can't afford Harvard. I would have had about the same trouble scraping together the money for an Ivy League college as the disadvantaged students featured in the article, maybe even more so because my parents didn't qualify for financial aid.

Allowing unqualified applicants to get into Berkeley or other colleges, and med schools too, for that matter, simply breeds resentment among the student body. This is the exact opposite of the intended goal, which is to bring together people from different backgrounds. Some of both definitely happened at Berkeley. I value being around people who are not exactly like me, and I know it's a necessary part of education. I understand that some more highly qualified people will be turned away in favor of including disadvantaged students. But I don't like the assumption that us rich kids will be just fine. It's harder to get into college and med school as a middle class white person, and I just want the affirmative action camp to acknowledge this.

For my part, I will acknowledge that it is harder to be a poor minority applying for college in the first place.

Wow, it's been awhile.

At first I thought the plan to build palm tree shaped islands off the coast of Dubai was dumb. I thought about the billions of dollars that are being spent to make it, money that could be used to feed the hungry and cure AIDS in Africa. I thought about how little control we humans really have over Nature, and how silly it was to expend so much energy and resources just to make two little islands. There are already millions of islands! Can't the sheiks of Dubai do something that benefits mankind?

But, then I started thinking like an American. These islands will be unlike anything anyone has ever seen: an innovation and an inspiration for all the builders and planners in the world. What's more, since it will be a luxury (or at least high-end) vacation destination and real estate venture, it will drive the everyday worker to work harder than he otherwise might have, in order to visit there. Maybe this particular project won't make a particular person strive for more. But it at least belongs to a lifestyle category that inspires the average American to keep working harder and trying to better his circumstances.

Whether that is necessary has yet to be explored. Next time.