Or some such thing. The fact that college tuition is on the raise, still is old news. I paid as much for my college education as some people pay for a house. Not a house in New York City, but a house nonetheless. Tuition will keep going up despite the desires of the government to go otherwise and so more people will go to state schools or be mired in debt or both. Reality.

What shocked me a little about grad school applications was the cost of simply applying to these schools. It’s not astronomical or anything, but I’m spending over 500 dollars to apply to six schools. Money that I will never see back. “Non-refundable Application Fee.” This seems a little much to me. In the end, we pay for any printing that’s done, any postage, and every other cost that goes into the application, but I still have to shell over 100 bucks just to have the privilege of you opening my envelope? That the fee exists I’m not surprised by, but that it’s as high as it is concerns me a little. I had to luck of not experiencing this for undergrad as I applied early and got accepted to the school, thus only having to pay one application fee, but I can see how these would pile up. At an open house the other day, one of the students said she was applying to 13 different programs. That’s got to be over 1000 dollars in application fees! This is absurd (well, so is the notion of applying to 13 different programs at least to me), but we’ve been taught in the whole application process to try to cover your bases. Have safety schools and reaches and all that type of stuff. I limited myself to programs close to New York that didn’t require a GRE score and still I had 6. It really just seems like another way for schools to siphon funds out of us, and in this case funds that we might not even be able to gain anything from.

In the world of eBay and all that type of good auctioning (they claim that winning something in an auction is more fun than just buying it outright, but I’m not so sure), everything is getting put up for the highest bidder, even Robosaurus. But don’t worry if you can’t make it down there, the Speed channel will be televising the event. Maybe you can phone in a bid. I don’t think it’ll be up on eBay, if only because of the astronomical shipping costs.

At work in Mexican Walmarts. Point being, if they’re willing to work for free, let them. I’m not saying it’s good. I’m not saying it’s right. In fact, I think it’s neither good nor right, but it is the way our economy is supposed to work. The supply and demand curves for labor are supposed to adjust and value work correctly.

Forbes reported on the top 10 most expensive celebrity divorces today. Forbes has always confused me with it’s top ten columns. They’ll do serious things and then cruel things and then fun things like top ten riches fictional characters. Top ten lists are everywhere these days and Forbes seems to have it all covered.

My personal favorite is the Richie divorce if only because there’s apparently a 20,000/year plastic surgery allowance. Really? 20 g’s a year? A judge/arbitrator thought that was necessary?

In other money hike news, the MTA budget comes out tomorrow and many fear a fare hike may be on the list. Riders hope that the congestion tax on drivers in New York City will alleviate the financial stress on the MTA and thus allow the bus and subway fares to stay the same, but nothing is certain with the congestion bill as it goes through the legislature. There is no doubt that the subway system needs work, as this Straphangers survey suggests(Note: I live along the W line - it does suck), but riders are already contribute a large portion of the operating budget of the MTA. I personally think the congestion tax is absolutely the best long term solution to the problem, but itwill also cause additional strain on the already defunct public transportation system in the short term. This I know, but I don’t really think that the riders should be punished for what I see as a mismanagement of funds. For example why do they constantly renovate stations along the 1 line and only below 116th street? Those stations were already pretty nice. What about fixing flooding problems such as the one’s we experienced a couple of days ago? Update trains along different lines so that the shittiest trains don’t “happen” to run on certain lines. It’s a blatant subway hierarchy and I shouldn’t have to pay extra because of it.

Can you feel it? Can you feel your pockets being weighed down by the extra cash? Can you? Well, you should be able to because minimum wage went up today from 5.15 to 5.85 and is one it’s way up to 7.25 per annum (I mean, hour). I believe New York State already has a minimum wage above 7 dollars, but either way they will now. This is the first national minimum wage increase in 10 years and according to the article minimum wage was at an inflation adjusted 52 year low.

Now I’m going to play a bit of a devil’s advocate here, but stick with me. (more…)

As you may or may not know, an NBA ref has been found to have connections to the mob and to have fixed games. Terrible news. Bill Simmon’s wrote a good article on it, and ESPN also had an interesting article with Brandon Lang, sports handicapper, discussing how an NBA referee might fix a game. But really what I found most interesting about the article is, one, look at the picture of the guy who wrote the article. Yikes. And two, those two on the left look nothing alike. Apparently, McConaughy’s character in Two For The Money was based on one Brandon Lang, and looking at it, I see the based on is solely on his story and not his ahem rugged good looks. I just think it’s funny how they’ll cast people who look nothing like their real life counterparts sometimes. Then, of course, sometimes they get it frighteningly right. Capote being a great example (Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a scarily good Truman Capote). Hoop Dreams got it right too (only kidding, that was a documentary).

So this clearly bodes ill for the basketball world, but hopefully some good will come of it. Hopefully the NBA will grab its bootstraps and pull itself out of the muck; new and improved. Time can only tell, but some serious changes are needed. As for actors not looking like their real world counterparts, make-ups only getting better so I’m sure that’ll get better too although I’d prefer people write original screenplays rather than adaptations of life.

Coming up with creative and witty titles is hard.

More importantly though (and this is somewhat old news) Daily Candy, the witty you’re-so-in-girl daily email newsletter/advertisement, was put up for sale and then eventually taken off the market after there was a private investment made into the company at a reported 130 mill. While this type of money is no where in the MySpace-News Corp realm or anything like that, it does show that there’s a bit of a run off from the pool of cash. MySpace and other social networking sites have been cashing in on larger corporations’ desire to reach large audiences through these crazy new things called computers. MySpace boasts a 65 million large network. Daily Candy has around a million subscribers. Daily Candy and MySpace are on the internet and that’s about the only way in which their similar. Daily Candy, if you don’t know it check out their webpage, exists as a sort of life guide for the it girl on the run (so to speak). In my short review of it, it also strikes me as one giant advertising mechanism. Interesting nonetheless (<– always shocked me that nonetheless is one word).

After the company’s short appearance on the selling block, the question becomes how do we price these new internet companies? What is the value of advertising in a world where advertising is quickly becoming shunned on? (more…)

Okay, maybe they’ll still be more. I’m telling you it’s an awesome movie, but what concerns me (okay, it really doesn’t concern me that much) is how little it made on its opening weekend. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, it made 67.6 mill and is estimated to gross about 250 mill worldwide. I don’t see why this isn’t higher. More people should see this movie. I don’t think you understand. It’s a good movie as well as being a drop draw action movie. I have a feeling it might do better than people think in the longer term because word of mouth praise for it has been good. This may be the type of movie that has a similar second weekend to first, because 1. it’s the summer and 2. like I said people are saying this is a good movie so that may motivate people who wouldn’t have seen it the first weekend (or at all) to see it.

Only time can tell.

Autobots, move out.

My elevator informed me today that 168 new bank branches opened in Manhattan in some period of time (I didn’t get to read the actual period, but I’d assume it’s a year). I found that absurd. How and why are these banks opening so many physical branches? In an age where everything is moving to the internet, isn’t the branch going to become somewhat obsolete? I mean, I understand having your bank’s ATMs around, but actual people and branch type things? I feel as though there is minimal stuff that actually happens within the banks themselves. Couldn’t you have less branches? Especially in a place like Manhattan, right? For example there is a Washington Mutual branch on 96th street and Broadway and 90th. There are like 10 banks between 110th and 116th on Broadway. Tons along Ditmars Ave in Queens. They’re everywhere. How does this work? Can someone run the numbers on this for me?Could someone also substantiate the rumor that Commerce banks can be converted into fast food restaurants in something like 48 hours?