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by Dave Tomar (2012)
If only this college student could earn some money to pay his stack of parking tickets and get some more booze and weed. Lo and behold, a friend was willing to give him some money, but paragon of virtue, Tomar, would not just take charity. His friend decided to pay him to do her work and a career was born. Everyone draws the ethical line somewhere.
The author explains, even though he knows this wasn't 'right,' it also wasn't his fault the proverbial system was so broken that kids were paying him to do their work. He was just one cog in the broken wheel of American education. He saw an opportunity and seized it. After all, a guy has to drink, I mean, eat, doesn't he?
He portrays his alma mater, Rutgers, as the prototype for the failure of higher education in America while he spent his time earning parking tickets, binge drinking with 'weed under his fingernails' and we're supposed to take him seriously about his analysis of the quality of education? Perhaps we should. It may have been amongst the myriad subjects he researched over the years when his paying customers were doing who-knows-what with their time. He likely received more education on the job than many of us do in ours. But that does not erase the ethics conundrum.
And he indeed tries to rationalize the ethics question staring us in the face. In fact, it's irrelevant that today, there is a push to send everyone to college. That his job with the paper-writing outfit was the only one he had where the business owners were ethical in their business practice is nice. Also irrelevant. I won't even address his contempt for professors who expect their students to use sources that are not found via a Google search. Yes, that did make your job more difficult.
By the end of this book, we were left with a man that had a vast body of knowledge by virtue of his work, who partially redeemed himself through his experiences, but did he really learn?
2- The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-Ups and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle (2012)
Before I opened this book, I knew nothing about cycling nor did I know about doping. But suddenly I was educated about hematocrit, testosterone, blood transfusions, the Omerta, the European races, blood-boosting EPO and how the public was deceived. And I was hooked. On the story. Nothing more sinister.
Tyler Hamilton was a top-ranked, world-famous cyclist on the Tour de France-winning US Postal team alongside juggernaut Lance Armstrong. But what we see isn't always what it seems. Inside the professional cycling world, doping was a given. Widely known, but completely unscrupulous. However you are only one test away from getting caught, from a life-changing announcement and suddenly you are shunned by the brotherhood, stripped of your achievements.
This book chronicles his foray into professional cycling, his resistance to performance-enhancing drugs and his realization that if he did not succumb, he would not keep up with the rest because, truly, mom, everyone is doing it. While he regrets it having been that way, he rationalized it throughout his career as not having been wrong. "...we didn't think of it as cheating. It felt fair to break the rules because we knew others were too." What kind of life is it, hitting the living room floor when the bell rings to avoid drug testers, melting the labels off bottles that you then hide, petrified that the garbage you toss will be traced to you, trusting foreign doctors to give you regular transfusions in remote hotel rooms with promises of increased endurance and strength? A very stressful one.
Does he have an agenda? It can be argued that we all have one. Perhaps his is revenge on Lance Armstrong. Or it can be to restore the sport he loves to its former, honest glory. Hamilton appears to be genuine, in his criticisms of himself, the sport, the governing agency, Armstrong and others. If even a fraction of what he says about Lance Armstrong is true, he is loathsome. Very much a myth.
3- Throwing Stones at the Moon: Narratives From Columbians Displaced by Violence
edited by Sibylla Brodzinsky and Max Schoening (2012)
This volume is part of the Voice of Witness series, committed to sharing the human rights crises around the world in the voices of the affected. Through narratives, Columbians share the trial and tragedies of living, working, raising children and denouncing crime in their homeland. And sometimes they share the story of leaving Columbia to escape a fate of certain death.
It delves into the history of guerilla warfare, drug cartels, paramilitaries, corrupt government and dovetails this with personal stories of wealthy, poor and middle class families, mothers, husbands, the educated, the farmworker, all adversely affected by the bloody in-fighting by which Columbia has been plagued for decades. Displaced, disfigured, disabled, bereft and grieving, these people bravely share their stories, some under pseudonyms, to tell the world the truth.
At once, heartbreaking, graphic and black with sorrow, we have a duty to hear their stories so we can do better and bear witness to the suffering. As citizens in a powerful, safe country perhaps we will have our eyes open to opportunities to aid those truly in need.
I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b
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