April 28, 2008
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Google Maps error causes me a bit of consternation
I arrived in Liberal, Kansas after dark, Googled the location of Wal-Mart where I hoped to spend the night, drove there - and found no Wal-Mart. It took a few minutes, but I found it lurking a few blocks over. I only recently started using Google Maps to locate businesses and now wonder how often this kind of thing happens.
Night camp:
Wal-Mart parking lot, Liberal, Kansas
The Credential of the Dominant
The general veneration that greets the academy is a sign of its near-sacred station and of the importance of its role in, as Bourdieu would view it, the reproduction of the dominant class and its habitus. Although the rewards of academics are middling in terms of financial capital, the cultural capital they accrue cannot be surpassed. To have a college degree -- only about one-quarter of American adults do -- is to have the credential of the dominant; not to have a college degree is to remain forever among the dominated.
The Whipping Boy, Jib Fowles, Reason magazine, March 2001