4A - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4A - Wdnesdy, Setembe 7, 211 Th Michgan ily- icigndil.o fJE1iihian :a4~l Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com JEFF ZUSCHLAG E-MAIL JEFF AT JEFFDZ@UMICH.EDU 10 STEPHANIE STEINBERG EDITOR IN CHIEF MICHELLE DEWITT and EMILY ORLEY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS I don't see why the GOP Is camppinigso fiercely for teW eHouse; apparently, they already Following caving Into demands have It, during the debt ceiling talks, President Obama has recently scrapped ti hter smog regulations. c a Acoursemi irony NICK SPAR MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. FROM TE DAILY Not just all talk -Obama must turn rhetoric into jobs T he city of Detroit celebrated Labor Day with more excitement than usual on Monday. President Barack Obama came to the Motor City to speak to a packed crowd at the Renaissance Center about job creation and rebuilding Detroit. While Obama was successful in energiz- ing the crowd with enthusiastic rhetoric, the phrase, "actions speak louder than words," is ringing in many people's ears - especially the unemployed. The president's decision to spend Labor Day in Detroit is an encouraging acknowl- edgement of a city that has faced more than its fair share of struggles during the past several decades. But Detroit and its resi- dents don't need an inspirational speech. They need a concrete plan and specific gov- ernment action to bring the city back to life. Obama needs to show that he takes job growth and the nation's staggering unem- ployment seriously by delivering a real plan and real results. Obama's speech came on the heels of the jobs speech he will give to Congress Thurs- day evening. This event has gripped much of the nation's attention and is an important step toward encouraging bipartisan gover- nance, but he could have used the Detroit speech as an opportunity to outline his plan for job construction. Rather than save that speech for Congress, Obama could have used the gathering to explain how he is going to get Congress to work together and tackle the serious obstacles that face the job creation process. Many residents of Detroit need jobs now, and while Obama did touch on a plan in the works to create major infrastructure proj- ects, he didn't explain how he planned to get these projects funded in light of pending budget cuts. In order for these projects to come to fruition, Congress needs to support them. But the last time Congress had a dis- cussion about federal funding, the govern- ment nearly shutdown, and Obama ended up conceding to Republican demands. Tomor- row night, Obama needs to firmly support the promise he made to the city of Detroit and ensure that Congress doesn't delay or dimin- ish these projects. Obama told his audience that he was going to defend union rights, but in light of the debt ceiling negotiations, constituents are justifi- ably concerned about the president's ability to stick to his guns in the face of adversity. Obama needs to recognize the importance of unions in making the auto industry func- tion properly and defend these organizations before Congress. A Sept. 2 report by the U.S. Labor Depart- ment indicated that no jobs were added in the United States during the month of August. This information is reality for thousands of struggling Americans and many people throughout the city of Detroit. Regardless of party affiliation, it should be the goal of the U.S. government to make the economy as strong as possible. Obama needs to turn his powerful rhetoric into action and use Thurs- day's speech to unite Congress and begin the process toward lowering the nation's unem- ployment rate. W ASHINGTON D.C. - Of all the challenges I expected to be wrapped up in teach- ing a course for Michigan stu- dents in Wash- ington, D.C. last fall a suf- focating sense of irony and despair was not NEILL amongthem. MOHAMMAD Politi- cal science is often a depressing topic. Introduc- tory courses on international rela- tions deal with terrorism, genocide and the multiple reasons why we shouldn't expect any cooperative effort to address the defining chal- lenge of our lifetimes: catastrophic man-made climate change. These are sad problems with few solutions. This semester's class should, at face value, be much less bleak. I'll be teaching research design, which is a fancy way of saying that it's a course on critical thinking, built around constructing an original piece of research. We'll focus on what makes a good argument, like identifying a specific claim about the world that students can support with empiri- cal, or "real world," evidence. Ideally, students will leave the class not only better able to perform research, but also as more sophisticated critics of other people's political arguments. This is all well and good, except for the problem of the class loca- tion: Washington, D.C. This is not the kind of town that rewards care- ful arguments based on evidence - or rewards simply behaving in good faith, for that matter. This is often the case during times of crisis. For exam- ple, when Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsay Graham (R-N.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Coon.) spent the entire summer complaining that President Barack Obamawas notsuf- ficiently committed to overthrowing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, only to have it reported by Wikileaks that the same three senators had promised Gaddafi two years ago that they would do everything in their power to sell him more American weapons. Similarstories unfold duringelec- tions as well. Most reporters have already decided that the prodigious job growth in Texas last year con- stitutes a "miracle," even though the picture is much more complex given unusual immigration patterns there. In any event, Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, a presidential candidate papered over his state's budget deficit with federal stimulus dollars only to declare that no stimulus would ever be adopted during his presidency. And then there are the rumors that Obama will offer a much-needed mortgage restructuring program to the public, but only after firstdevising a deal to give immunity to America's largest banks against any prosecu- tion for widespread fraud and abuse ofordinary consumersthatgoesback decades. The total settlement fund is capped at $20 billion. In compari- son, Florida's state pension system alone lost $62 billion in value in 2008 after mortgage-backed security shell game came to ascreeching halt. But those are all large, compli- cated, difficult issues. Sometimes the doublethink comes in much smaller packages, which are more entertain- ing but also even harder to justify. Take former Democratic Con- gressman Harold Ford and former Republican Sen. John Sununu, who are both paid lobbyists for Broad- band for America - a group that represents Internet service provid- ers. Ford and Sununu recently co- authored a piece for the San Jose Mercury News arguing that Netflix, the popular streaming video service, should pay more for the bandwidth needed to provide videos to their customers. D.C. doesn't reward debates based on facts. How much more? It's unclear. Why? Because Ford and Sununu believe that Netflix doesn't pay "enough." But Netflix, just like any other customer, is simply paying whatever price it's given by its sup- pliers. The entire point of a market is that the goods and services being traded are priced at whatever their worth and are worth whatever their price. The ISPs represented by Sununu and Ford could just raise their prices if they think they're getting a raw deal, but they won't. Instead,they'lljusthave the two con- gressmen on their payroll try to mug theirbiggestcustomer. And that's par for the course for politics at the highest levels. Nor- mal people - sane people - find it hard to say one thing and do another, like McCain and his colleagues on Libya, or to adopt positions that are so clearly at odds with the way the world actually works, like Ford and Sununu. I hope that this semester's Michigan in Washington students don't find that sanity is a liability. -Neill Mohammad can be reached at neilla@umich.edu. ERIKA MAYER| EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Aida Ali, Michelle DeWitt, Ashley Griesshammer, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Harsha Nahata, Emily Orley, Teddy Papes, Timothy Rabb, Seth Soderborg, Andrew Weiner Bed break-up At least twice a week I wish there were more hours in the day. I'm sure I would be such a good student, have a great social life, be able to keep up with world events and be really well rounded if there were 30 hours in a day. Some people sacrifice sleep to achieve this goal, but I'm a little too in love with my bed for that option. A few of my friends are about to embark on a mission to find those extra hours in the day. Their method: polyphasic sleep. Instead of the monophasic sleep - one long sleep period - employed by most humans, they'll be tak- ing several short naps throughout the day. In every four-hour period they will sleep for 20-30 minutes and awaken feeling refreshed and ready to take on the next four hours. The total sleep time per day: two hours. Excuse me? For 22 hours a day polyphasic sleepers are awake and functioning. The cycle is hard to establish, taking about a week of serious sleep deprivation before the body adjusts to the new schedule. Essentially, polypha- sic sleepers train their body to immediately enter Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or REM. This usually occurs later in most people's sleep patterns, but after the first week of polyphasic sleeping the body (supposedly) falls directly into REM, meaninga 20 minute nap is enough to recharge the body for the next four hours. Being stuck in the car with these guys, I listened to a two hour conversation about all the things they would do with their extra time and how cool it would be to be awake while everyone else was peacefully dozing. They agreed they had to do it together, or they would fall asleep at 3 a.m. out of bore- dom, then returned to a list of places you could sleep on campus at 2 p.m. and how it would work for football games (the idea being that enough people pass out in the stu- dent section that no one would notice). As they explained this to me, my eyes almost popped out of my head. Like a magic genie appearing out of a leftover beer bottle my wish was answered. Six extra hours to work out, socialize, read, actually finish my homework. It's a college student's dream. Until I got back to the little issue of my bed. There's nothing I love more than cocoon- ing myself under the covers for a solid eight hours. And then there's the little issue of believability. Surely this didn't actually work. I did a quick Google search and found a guy who successfully tried polyphasic sleep for almost six months. His website - stevepavli- na.com - detailed his journey and eventually his return to monophasic sleep. Surprisingly, polyphasic sleep seems to be everything my friends said it was. Steve was able to sleep for a total of two hours a day and be a productive human being the rest of the day. It still seems like magic to me, but there was one last thing tugging at my mind. Everyone who has been through the jet-lag period when returning from abroad knows that being awake at 4 a.m. when everyone else is sleeping is not the most exciting part of life. It's one thing to stay up all night with friends at a party, but is it really possible to be the only one awake without falling asleep or sinking into depression? Steve apparently agreed with me - being a polyphasic sleeper in a monophasic world was just too hard. I'm not sure I'll ever find out if I could pull it off, no matter how tempting the extra time is. I just like my bed too much. But it'll be interesting to see if these guys can pull it off. At the very least, I might have someone to hang out with when Ihave jet lag. Erika Mayer is an LSA senior. Foreign roots few months ago, during my semester abroad in France, a winemaker told me the key to cultivat- ing the perfect grape. When- ever he plants new grapevines, he explained, he looks for the dri- est, rockiest dirt to plant them in. MATTHEW By this logic, the GREEN less fertile the soil, the deeper a vine must set its roots to receive the nutrients it requires. And the longer the roots, the more minerals they can absorb to lend the grape its unique flavor. To make the perfect grape, the winemaker said, "the vine must suffer." It's a poetic, all-purpose sort of metaphor - that suffering gives you character, and the best things in life come from hard work. (Inci- dentally, "cliche" has the same meaning in French as in English). But for me, it's a poignant symbol for my semester abroad. Admit- tedly, it's difficult to say I did a lot of "hard work" that spring I spent in the South of France. I recognize the many ways I was uniquely blessed to have this privilege. Yet my expe- rience required more from me than I was expecting - it wasn't just the gallivanting-through-Europe that my Facebook friends might've rea- sonably assumed from photos. This past January, I traded Ann Arbor for Aix-en-Provence, France. I would stay for five months, taking classes in French and living with a host family who spoke no English. I understood that this was about leav- ing home, friends, family - forgo- ing the familiar for the unforeseen. That's what made it so appealing: the opportunity for personal explo- ration. Or at least that's what I, and virtually everyone else, wrote in the program application. But leaving who and what I loved proved painful for a while. It wasn't so much about homesickness as it was about foreignness. I didn't mind water without ice or hanging my clothes to dry. What got to me was how people were constantly staring and how exhausting it was to com- municate true emotions or thoughts deeper than, "une crpe nurella, s'il vous plait." I met terrific new people, but in many ways I was alone. I also had my first experiences with anti-Semitism, and I had to consciously choose if and when I would disclose my Jewish identity to my host family and others. The French, for whom etiquette reigns supreme, ignore all politesse when sharing their opinions with strang- ers - particularly when it comes to America and/or Tews. I never felt threatened, but the feelings associ- ated with "coming out" as Jewish affected me in a powerful way. Per- haps only in France would "coming out" as a Jew be harder for me than coming out as gay. Although that, too, affected my sense of foreign- ness. And all the while, I wondered what was going on at home. I enjoyed the croissants and wine and bceuf bourguignon, but from time to time I mused on what life would've been like had I chosen to stay home. In my lonelier moments, I imagined Ann Arbor teeming with the people, places and things I adored. Ultimately, my time in Europe was phenomenal. As rough as it is to feel foreign, there's really no avoiding that when you're in, well, a country that's not your own. I built a couple lasting relationships, became nearly fluent in French and I'll never forget the drag show in that Buda- pest gay bar. I'll refrain from enu- merating the lessons I learned, and I'll save discussing my "personal growth" for my therapist's couch. But I'd like to make the point that uprooting and rebuilding oneself is a far more significant challenge than I assumed last December. Doing so may be difficult in any place, notjust while studying abroad. But for all the people who think study abroad is a semester-long, summer-long or yearlong vacation, it's worth know- ingthatitcanbeharderthanitlooks. Semester abroad is harder than people think. Like anything else, studying abroad means something different to everyone. It may be about falling in love, escaping home, learning a new language, exploring your his- tory or drinking your way through each member state of the European Union. If it makes sense for you to go abroad, you shouldtryit. Whetheror not extending deeper roots made me into a tastier grape, I can only hope it did. It's possible that study abroad just turned me into a wino, or a snob about things like... wine. What I do know, however, is that I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Matthew Green can be reached at greenmat@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Readers are encouraged to submit letters to the editor. Letters should be fewer than 300 words and must include the writer's full name and University affiliation. 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