Farewell column

Well, it's time to end my career here by dropping my load of advice to get you through the next few decades. So: if you don't like the "Third World Transition Program" for minority students, start your own togetherness program, and ... [material specific to Brown University omitted] ... and please try to confine your nostalgia to reading Pogo and remembering things that wouldn't be cool if they were rerun: the Cultural Revolution, Hamelin, everything in Naked Lunch, etc. Be governed by laws, not men, do unto others, judge not etc., try to find more arguments for abortion rights that don't also justify eugenics or forced euthanasia, and if you want a future in journalism try to remember the difference between homophones and synonyms (yeah, I know they sound alike, but still ...). I've also learned that everybody from Maine is unutterably cool -- They must send their children out into the woods at an early age to see if they can get along with the grizzly bears or not. Back home, Maine's just not on our radar screen. It's as unknown as Baffinland. Finally, someone should spend next semester figuring this one out: if economics and ecology are different focuses of the same science, with the same principles and thought processes, why do they prescribe opposite actions (or inactions) on most specific questions of resource use? And why do we snicker at developers who promise to do great things for "the ecology," while listening earnestly to politicians who speak of "the economy" as if it were a little ol' user-friendly two-cycle engine?