Fortune Telling is for Fools

It's stupid and arrogant to predict the future. Any attempt will inevitably embarrass and humiliate the soothsayer.

John McCain will be the next president.

If he loses the primary he will run as an independent with Rudy Giuliani and together they will lead the next great shift in American politics: The Moderate Revolution. McCain will pummel Hillary Clinton in the general election.

The Democrats will outperform Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections, but Republicans will maintain an advantage of 20 members in the House and six in the Senate. However, Democrats will gain a majority of governors. Joe Lieberman will win back his Senate seat as an independent candidate.

The Cubs will not win a World Series until fans learn to stop attending losing seasons, but the youthful optimism of Cubs fans may never allow that.

Pushed by voters from our age group, Social Security will be privatized.

Unlike the way we listen to classic rock, almost none of the music from our generation will be listened to by our children. On top of singers sounding like dying mountain goats and guitarists playing uninspired riffs, the music has no timeless element. Country music has a chance.

As another pretentious use of substantive due process, Roe v. Wade - just as Lochner v. New York before it - will be overturned by 2015.

Gay marriage will be legalized by the courts and will never be overturned.

This University, the country's most underrated, will eclipse Northwestern, the country's most overrated university, in terms of prestige.

Biology will become increasingly integrated with politics.

Iraq will be a stable democracy by 2020. Other Middle Eastern nations will follow. Just as democratization and capitalism safely redirected the violent proclivities of western Catholics and Protestants, so too will radical Islam evaporate. Democracies can take as long as 100 years to grow thick roots, but it's worth it.

Once the Middle East modernizes, Africa will become the new breeding ground for terrorism. Only then will the developed world genuinely focus its money and effort on the problems of Africa.

William Shatner will be remembered as the greatest lawyer, author, singer, songwriter, director and actor of all time.

The United States will never go to war with China because the same corporate influence on governments that is often derided will prevent major trading partners from ever warring.

Because of their ability to innovate and appreciation of free thought, India, not China, is the most likely candidate to overtake the U.S. as the world's most powerful country. The U.S. might not be the big dog, but the world will be forever cast in its image.

In 750 years, technology and capitalism will create such an absurd abundance of food and wealth that a Marxist organization of society will be feasible and desirable for the first time.

The world will continue to become increasingly wealthy, peaceful and happy.

Certainly optimism always has danger of naivete. But when that optimism is supported by the weight of facts it is not optimism at all - it is reality.

The Strangle of Online Texas Hold 'em

Can you imagine the amount of work I can get done in the time I waste playing poker?" asked Kevin Sukerski, a graduate student. "When I'm not playing, I research the electromagnetic effects on steel flow in a continuous casting mold."

Poker, specifically no-limit Texas hold 'em, has gripped the subconscious minds of thousands of college students. Some students have been forced to drop out of school, but more often the game can simply dominate life.

Sukerski has been playing online poker for more than a year. He lost about $600 the first few times he deposited money into Golden Palace Poker. Despite those losses he chose to keep playing.

"I know I'm better than the people I play against online. With the knowledge and the skill I have, I shouldn't lose," Sukerski said.

Finally he began winning. As he won more he increased his stakes. He began playing $.50/$1 blinds and eventually played $10/$20 blinds where each pot averages $300. At the height of his activity, which lasted for months, he would play at least four hours per day.

The loss of $3000 compelled Sukerski to withdraw the remainder of his winnings.

"I couldn't handle the swings," Sukerski said. "I would go from four grand to 800 dollars. They're too huge. I don't know. I just couldn't deal with it. When I lost money I felt like I had to get it back. That was the worst part. It's too much money when you don't have that much in the bank to replace it with."

He also recognized another type of loss.

"It has the feeling of wasted time. Even when you win sometimes it feels like a waste. You can spend four hours making $50. If it's $1000 then it's worth it. I think it's an easy way to make money, or it should be. But it's not," Sukerski said.

Sukerski, who had a 3.9 GPA as an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering, described online poker as surreal because of its electronic format.

"You don't realize what you're playing with. It's more difficult to see money being taken away from you if it's in dollar form than if it's just a number on a screen," he said.

Violent emotional reactions, also known as "tilt," often accompany online poker, "When you lose you get angry and start punching your door and lose more money replacing your door. If I win I eat something and watch more poker on TV," Sukerski said.

Now a bill that would crack down on Internet gambling has passed the House with a 317-93 vote and awaits Senate approval. The bill raises the larger question of whether the government should extend its tentacles to prevent consenting adults from forming electronic gambling contracts in order to protect us from ourselves.

While online gambling is unquestionably addictive, it is unclear whether we should allow our government to raid yet another realm of personal activity.

Since withdrawing his net winnings of $5000, Sukerski has re-deposited small amounts of money, "Sometimes I play, but I don't know why," he said. "It's not for money, I just want to see cards. I don't know why I can't stop."

Alternatives to Sweatshops

Many come to the University wearing guilt from their comfortable middle-class lives. How does a liberal college student atone for this guilt? By joining a student organization that hates something they don't understand - sweatshops are a nice example.

Sweatshops have existed in the West since about 1830. It took many years, but gradually Western sweatshops disappeared. The developing world today is a snapshot of the West during the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, sweatshops and low wages are a necessity of going from an agrarian, undeveloped country to a modern economy. This is illustrated by the growth of the Asian Tigers economies - Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore - from sweatshops to semiconductors.

Many of our country's liberal public intellectuals have made compelling cases in favor of sweatshops, including New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. On June 6 Kristof wrote, "Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops, demanding that companies set up factories in Africa. If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program."

The worst aspect of sweatshops is child labor. But according to a report by the United Nations Children's Fund, about 6,000 children resorted to prostitution when the U.S. nobly boycotted Nepal's carpet exports.

In 1992 Democratic Senator Tom Harkin introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act. Sounds like a nice and progressive humanitarian bill, right? In response, garment employers in Bangladesh fired 50,000 children. The UNICEF report states, "The children may have been freed, but at the same time they were trapped in a harsh environment with no skills, little or no education, and precious few alternatives. Schools were either inaccessible, useless or costly." Follow-up research by UNICEF revealed that children were forced to turn to "stone-crushing, street hustling and prostitution - all of them more hazardous and exploitative than garment production."

Countries compete to attract multinational corporations. When "progressive" groups in the West compel poor countries to enforce modern minimum wage or union laws, it encourages these corporations to set up factories in other countries. The UNICEF report cites an example from South Africa, "Black women who worked in a Taiwanese-owned sweater factory asked for improved wages and the right to join a union. The company's response was to close down all seven of its South African factories, putting 1,000 people out of work."

Benjamin Powell, a professor of economics at San Jose State University, did a study on third-world sweatshops. He found, "In 9 of the 11 countries we surveyed, the average reported sweatshop wages equaled or exceeded average incomes and in some cases by a large margin."

Sweatshops are deplorable, productive dungeons, but they're easy to attack when you don't look at the alternatives. People are choosing to work in sweatshops as opposed to doing something else or nothing at all - obviously the alternatives are even worse. Should third-world people starve and die so that guilty Americans can uphold their neatly crafted, unbending principles?

A Traveller between Worlds

Though American men and women our age are in Iraq, they live on a different planet and in a different time.

One such man is 22 year old Jake Pepper. He claims to have joined for "purely selfish reasons."

"When most people reach 24 years old they will not have seen and experienced what I have," Pepper said.

Pepper is not who you would expect. He comes from an upper-class family, his father is the Vice President of a major corporation and he was already attending DePaul University when he decided to enlist.

Last year, between January and May 2005, Pepper lived in Fallujah as a Navy Medic traveling with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines Corps - one of the most experienced and effective American units.

Pepper compares the anxiety he felt before leaving for Fallujah to "going from junior high to high school, only a lot more intense. It's the fear of the unknown." Pepper said that on leaving his family for Iraq it was "the first time I ever saw my dad cry."

Pepper said, "It is surreal when you first get there. But once you're there for a couple of weeks you begin to forget what people look like. That becomes your home. It is like how you feel when on vacation. It slowly becomes normal."

Pepper's unit found one of the largest weapons caches of the war - 20,000 pounds of armaments in a farm field. They also found a DVD inside a nearby house. Pepper understood the contents of the DVD as soon as it began to play. An insurgent in the video gave a long diatribe next to a guy kneeling down with a mask on and "then they kicked the guy over and sawed his head off. We possibly found the mask and pants that the guy wore."

When walking through city streets he sometimes heard mortars being fired, but said "you try not to think about it, because there's nowhere to go to be safe from them." One of Pepper's most vivid moments came when he saw four soldiers "messed up real bad" at the base's medical station, "I think one of them ended up dying."

At night Pepper's unit usually slept in a soda factory.

"We slept three to four hours a night. It's not hard to sleep when you're awake for 20 hours," he said. "You just have to trust the lookout guys."

Since being home Pepper has a phantom limb of sorts.

"I've had dreams that I'm back in Fallujah. The main reoccurring daydream is that I always try to reach down and find my pistol," Pepper said.

Pepper will be going to the Iraqi city of Al-Qa'im at nearly the same time we'll be starting next semester. As we walk between classmates on the cool, green Quad, he'll walk between people who want to kill him on the hot desert sand. While we sit comfortably, he stands.

War distills concerns to their raw core. As we worry about grades and money, Jake will worry about life and death.

The Summit Generation

We have been called "Millennials," "Gen Y" and "DotNets." We're the generation born after about 1978. We don't really know what we are yet. But, don't confuse us with the older Gen Xers, the "undesirables," as my mother would say. So what exactly are we? What do we think and what will we become?

About 18 percent of us are Latino, according to the Pew Research Center, twice as much as the Baby Boom generation. Approximately 38 percent of us are a racial minority compared to just 15 percent of the World War II generation.

Most of us think Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones are idiots. At 58 percent, we're twice as likely as the oldest generation to support additional gay rights, like adoption. When asked if interracial dating is acceptable, 91 percent of our generation "completely agrees" or "agrees," compared to just 74 percent for the rest of society.

In fact, we're generally more socially progressive, except in one surprising area: abortion. Teenage abortions have plummeted from Gen X rates of 100 per 1000 women to just 40 per 1000 women for our generation. We are less likely than any other generation to think that abortion should be generally available and the most likely to think it should never be permitted.

We're kind of prude, according to statistics from Planned Parenthood. About 54 percent of Gen X high school students reported having sexual intercourse, compared to less than 50 in our generation. We also have fewer sexual partners, but maybe we just have poorer memories or are better liars. In the early 90s, 42 percent of high school students reported having a drug free school - today 63 percent have that impression.

We hate Lou Dobbs. Just 34 percent of us think immigration is a big problem compared to 50 percent of the oldest generation. We're also less likely to see immigrants as a burden and more likely to think of immigrants as strengthening America. We're more likely to view Islam as a good and peaceful religion.

We walk Wall Street. We're significantly more likely than any other generation to have a favorable opinion of corporations and of private retirement accounts.

Fewer people in our generation have an accurate sense of the number of U.S. troop deaths in Iraq than older generations. This is disturbing given that we're the generation that has pals, lovers and family stationed in the area. We're also much less likely to display the American flag.

Our political identity seems to be forming as a fusion of progressive social values and free market appreciation. This is good news for my moderate third party that I am still predicting will rise up because of our generation's disdain for extremists and dolts on both sides.

I call us the Summit Generation. We have all the opportunities that previous generations hoped some future would. We've reached the top. Yes, I know, my nickname is just as stupid as the other ones, but it's fitting. We're pluralistic, tolerant, energetic, ambitious and smart. Most importantly, we're optimistic (well, at least 72 percent are about the future of our generation).