Quick recap

One quick post tonight after a busy week, I'll go through and link this later.

Visited Darden for an interview on Wednesday, I think it went well, but when I talk for 45 minutes straight I always think it sounds good. Heard back from Wharton today, it was the standard denial letter, but now in internet form, so I felt good that my rejection was not harming the earth. Three more schools to go, and Harvard still hasn't even opened the application. This process sucks.

Got a lot of cool links this week. I'll try to group them all by general topic:

- Read an article in the Post entitled The Dumbing of America. The general thrust of the article is that not only is the American attention span waning and education focusing more on teaching to a test rather than learning, but that people are content on not knowing information, and to point this out is labeled as elitist. I don't think reading the authors entire book would be very interesting, but in a two page opinion form it seems pretty good.

- Another article from Business Week focused on Verizon's current offer of unlimited minutes for $100 a month, prompting at&t and T-Mobile to follow suit. The article said that all stocks lost ground in a fear that this singles new pricing wars, which is great now that I plan on leaving the Company cell phone plan.

- Debby sent me a link about an article on the modern woman, who has so many choices in front of her that her life is vastly different from her parents, and the desire to succeed is mostly based on the dearth of opportunities that are provided. Makes me feel like I haven't moved cities enough.

- Another article, from the New Yorker, entitled The Birthday Party, focused on Stephen Schawarzman, head of the Blackstone group. Great profile of a business leader, very fair presentation of his talents and faults.

- Finally, Roger did a bunch of research after we had questioned each other about the situation with Advanced Towing on Sunday. He found a bunch of really interesting information. Starting at Wikipedia, he found an article on predatory towing, which linked him to Virginia towing laws, "among the forefront of towing laws in America meant to protect vehicle owners from predatory towing practices". Apparently tow drivers are required to take pictures of a car prior to towing so they can't claim a car was damaged prior to being towed, and other restrictions. Of the counties in Virginia, Arlington has the toughest restrictions. From there, Roger found a bunch of other websites, including one blog which takes pictures of Arlington county vehicles illegally parked (but has been inactive for over a year), a review of Advance Towing, which also towed Scott's car and illegally charged him over the $95 maximum fee even though he was parked in his own garage, and a few stories of seriously pissed of people who got towed. One guy was pissed that kids sat in a parking lot waiting for people to park illegally so they could get towed, and one felt he was mistreated by Franks Towing, which ended up getting out of the towing business after the owner was arrested for tax fraud and ordered to pay $16,000 in fines for overcharging people. If you have time, read the Franks towing website, its hilarious.