Friday, March 25, 2011

Fire! Fire! Fire!

I wasn't feeling very good this morning, so I decided to take a nap on the couch outside of the office in Catlett. While sitting there, I heard this loud, piercing sound ring through the building... for a split second I thought I was hallucinating, but it turns out it was just the fire alarm.

A motor somewhere in the building started smoking, and the smoke got sucked into the ventilation system, to be ejected into the library. The smoke alarms went off and everyone got out of class for like an hour. Everything's fine, though.

It got me thinking, though... if the music building burned, what would happen? It's a brick building, so it probably wouldn't take too much structural damage, but there's a lot of valuable stuff in Catlett- All the resources in the Fine Arts Library could be gone, we could lose the two organs, a ton of pianos, and a bunch of other instruments. I wonder what the contingency plan is for the school burning.

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Something I've been thinking a lot about lately- why are politicians and politics so geared towards public opinion? I know that the whole concept of democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people... but why are we so focused on that? I don't think the people really know what we're doing half the time. I mean, think about when a complex system or mechanism isn't working right- whether that's your leg, your computer, or your marriage- more often than not, people go to an expert to fix the problem or to get the knowledge to do it themselves.

Why don't we treat international diplomacy, the economy, or public policy the same? As soon as a political issue comes up, everybody becomes an expert and thinks that they simply cannot be wrong because their opinion is what's right. I respect the fact that everyone has a right to their opinion, but that doesn't make them an expert on the issue. I love my roommate very dearly, but every time the economy comes on the news, he starts bitching about how "Obama is handling everything all wrong, and that the best way to stimulate the economy is..." (and that's the point at which I stop paying attention. Something about jobs.)

He absolutely has the right to his opinion. But he's a sophomore in college. I'm not saying he's dumb, or has no idea what he's talking about... but he's a sophomore in college. He's certainly not an economic expert.

I wish people would be more willing to admit that they don't necessarily know everything.

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