2004-07-04

I could write about my 4th of july, but why bother? emosnail has written it up in the utmost hilarity. furzicle wrote a post about it too.

public universities

I feel like I've come across at least a half-dozen references lately of important people saying they chose they University of California because -- being free at the time -- it was the only institution they could afford.

For instance, Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel laureate chemist: "Given my family's finances, the nearby University of California at Los Angeles was my only possible choice because it was tuition-free and I could commute from home."

Robert S. McNamara said something along the lines of "I wanted to go to Harvard, but there's no way my family could afford it. So I enrolled at Berkeley."

I think a compilation of such references would be a nice rebuttal to Reagan's quipp, "why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" It's not just Reagan who is afflicted by this notion.

On another note, I picked up Seaborg's autobiography, Adventures In The Atomic Age today at the university bookstore for an astonishing $4.98. Reading it makes me sad I never met him; we overlapped for about a year at Berkeley. The book starts out talking about how his grandparents emigrated to Michigan from Sweden, and how his whole family was fluent in Swedish and celebrated Christmas with a julbord, etc etc.

By the way, I'm phenomenally bored. Someone rescue me!