Author: Menachem Kaiser

The Jewish people are only too familiar with exile and exodus. But these days it’s an exodus of their own choosing.

Every Passover, tens of thousands of Jewish families sell their homes (temporarily!) and head to a luxury hotel or resort for the duration of the holiday. It is a huge overlooked corner of the tourism industry: for a minimum of eight days at prices that start around $1,500 a head, families that sprawl across generations consume obscene amounts of food and entertainment, plus travel expenses. But why Passover?

In the story of the Exodus, Jews were freed from slavery and rushed out of Egypt so quickly that their bread didn’t have time to rise. To commemorate, Jewish law states that during Passover, no bread, grains or leavened products — known as chametz — can be eaten or even remain on your property. Couch cushions, book pages, baby cribs, telephones, radiators, pants cuffs and pockets — all have to be scoured for renegade foodstuffs.

Depending on the level of observance, Passover preparation can range from a stressful Spring cleaning to a full-blown, commando-style search-and-destroy mission that begins months beforehand. Plus, there’s significant food preparation to do, especially if extended family is involved.

It’s stressful and time-consuming, but where there’s a need, there’s a religious loophole. As with the infamous Shabbos Goys (Gentiles who do work for Jews on the Sabbath; their ranks have reportedly included Martin Scorcese, Colin Powell, Elvis Presley and even Barack Obama), sometimes Jews need a hand from the non-Chosen Ones.

Jewish law allows the sale of chametz to a non-Jew, who’s the technical owner of the household for the duration of the holiday, after which it’s bought back. In practice, the congregation appoints their rabbi as an agent who sells the communal chametz kit-and-caboodle to a trusted non-Jew. It’s easy and effective, and widely practiced among the Orthodox. (On a technical note: They’re not selling the house itself; they’re selling all chametz inside, plus access to the house.)

Even Jews who stay home for Passover effect the sale (called the mechirah). They clean house, and store the verboten goods and dishes in sealed-off cabinets, closets, and rooms. No need to flush the 18-year aged whiskey or chuck that very special ice cream cake.

The Passover tourists just sell it all — no need to clean! — and off to a catered seder they go.

The practice isn’t restricted to individuals. The State of Israel owns a lot of chametz: About $150 million worth when you total up state-owned companies, prison services, and stocks of emergency supplies. Holding onto it during Passover would render it unfit for consumption by the Orthodox. So every year it is sold to Jaaber Hussein, an Arab manager of an Israeli hotel, for a down payment of $4800.

(As it happens, some Muslims have a similar travel tradition. Wealthy Indonesians flock en masse to hotels and resorts during Id al-Fitr, the celebration that closes Ramadan, because it’s easier than doing without the domestic servants who go home for the holiday.)

Of course, many non-Orthodox Jewish families don’t particularly care about the cleaning regimen; for them, it’s more about a family vacation, and hotels offer a convenient, if expensive, solution to hosting and feeding the clan — especially if part of the clan is Orthodox.

Yonah Krakowsky’s family has been traveling the Passover travel circuit from Fort Lauderdale to Niagara Falls since he was twelve, along with a large, rotating cast of cousins and grandparents.

“The holiday is extremely difficult to prepare for, and going away really lightens the load,” he said. “And we’re together for eight days — it’s quality family time, and means a lot to my grandparents.”

Jews can munch matzah in Hawaii, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Costa Rica, Aruba, Cannes, and many other places besides. Florida alone has dozens of hotels that convert to Passover mode, and the trend has recently taken off with Israeli Jews. A few years ago, an Israeli company was peddling a Passover package in Egypt, which is almost unendurably ironic. Some of the fanciest hotels in the United States have Passover programs, like the Biltmore in Scottsdale, AZ, and the Fountainebleau in Miami. There are Passover cruises, Passover safaris, and Passovers for Jewish singles.

The great majority of these hotels go Passover kosher, which is dizzying in complexity and scope. No outside food items may be brought in by guests or wait staff, lest it contain leavened products. Kitchen appliances, sinks, and countertops must be made kosher — a process that involves blowtorches and gallons of boiling waters. Special Passover utensils have to be bought. Armies of kosher supervisors called mashgiach have to employed. And absolutely no bread products are allowed.

Imagine feeding hundreds of picky and pampered people multiple times a day for eight days, without wheat or flour — especially if they demand food that, to put succinctly, doesn’t taste like Passover food. There’s an entire mini-industry devoted to mimicking standard cuisine: Cakes, pancakes, muffins and pizza are all, somehow, produced and served. Occasionally, there’s an honest-to-God miracle for the Passover-observant, like quinoa. Rice, due to rabbinic fears of it being confused for wheat, is forbidden to Ashkenazi Jews, even if it’s not technically chametz. But quinoa was ‘discovered’ after the prohibition was enacted, and was therefore not included. This means that Passover needn’t equal sushi-deprivation.

It’s not just food that has to be delivered: entertainment, too, is a must. Passover, as celebrated in America, consists of two two-day holidays sandwiching four “intermediate days” when work is prohibited. Hotels scramble to fill those days with activities, concerts, and the like. Prominent Jewish singers are in high demand. Rabbis and scholars in resident are used to lure potential guests. Stand-up comedians riff about the exodus and, of course, the food. Children are assigned to day care, adolescents have to be herded up and distracted, and the twentysomethings have Passover dance parties. “It’s pretty similar to a cruise ship,” Sam Lasko, the President of Lasko Family Kosher Tours, told me. “We offer food, room, a tea room, day care, scholars, children’s activities, adult activities, religious services — the whole nine yards.”

So maybe the expense is justified, after all. Five thousand dollars a person is common for the high end resorts, and it rarely dips below $1500. There’s no reliable hard data on the size of the Passover tourist market, but Menachem Lubinsky (no relation), a marketing consultant who specializes in the kosher industry, estimates it is worth about $100 million a year. Michael Kaiser (yes relation), writing a few years back in an Orthodox magazine, echoed that number, but warned it was a very conservative estimate. Lubinsky told me that more than 20,000 American Jews participate in Passover programs around the world.

It’s even somewhat recession-resistant: though five Passover programs (representing about 1500 spots) in America were closed this year, all the participants were absorbed into facilities. Because while Passover can be expensive, it’s not optional. And the hotels are determined to make it as headache-free and enjoyable as possible.

But even five-star service has its limits when it comes to Passover, as Krakowsky says, especially with the food.

“It doesn’t matter what they make,” he said. “It all tastes like potato latkes.”

(Nav Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

There are products where smallness is a marketing virtue, like cellphones or
thong underwear. But small condoms are a marketing nightmare. If advertising is about creating consumer desire, who aspires to a size extra-small?

The result is a condom aisle at the drug store where all the men, a la Lake Wobegon, are “above average.” But the status quo may have dire public health implications.

According to the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, 45
percent of men reported that
they had experienced an ill-fitting condom within the last three months.

The misfits were significantly more likely to report breakage
and slippage, along with difficulty reaching orgasm, both for their
partners and for themselves, and a host of other sexual mishaps. Not
surprisingly, men with ill-fitting condoms were more likely to take them
off before sex was even over — all of which adds up to a massive failure
for the one job a condom exists to fulfill.

Aside from a realistic range
of sizes, there is a dizzying amount of condom variety. A non-exhaustive
list: ribbed, for her/his pleasure, studded, lubricated, extra thin,
scented, textured, unscented, flavored, extended pleasure, colored,
with/without spermicide, glow in the dark, lamb skin, warming. But aside
from the machismo-imbued “Magnum” designation, you’d be hard-pressed to
find any size labels. What’s a modestly
endowed guy to do? And perhaps more importantly, are the condom
manufacturers being irresponsible by not being transparent in their
sizing? Do they even make small condoms?

In fact, there is some
size variation in condoms, but it’s couched in jargon. LifeStyles has by
far the most direct code, called “Snugger Fit.” Here is a
sizing chart for Durex condoms.

Trojan seems to
have recalibrated its sizes a la Starbucks (and there is something
appealing, if patronizing, about the idea of buying a “Tall” condom when
in fact it’s the opposite). The company organizes
its products by Regular, Large, and Extra Large. Ah, so the
regular is actually a small? Wrong. The regular is actually regular — 35 of their
42 lines fall under this category — not exactly following the bell
curve.

Buying condoms online neatly sidesteps this entire mess, though even on the ostensibly private and shame-proof internet, a
comparison of the smaller
condom selection vs. the large
condom offerings is instructive. But condoms tend to be
unplanned, impulse buys — hence the rather limited number of bulk
purchases, despite considerable savings and a condom’s 3-5 year
lifespan.

So what’s to be done? It’s tricky territory. TheyFit
Condoms offers seventy different sizes (none of which
are labeled “small”), and guarantees a “custom” condom. But in order to
enjoy that superlative fit, you’ll have to measure,
and carefully at that. The site thoughtfully warns, “Watch out for
paper cuts!”

Spray-on
condoms seemed promising, but the latex doesn’t dry quickly enough
for the understandably impatient consumer. Dr. Bill Yarber, of the
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in
Indiana, recommends
re-labeling small condoms as “large”, regular as “extra-large” and
so on. But this would require some sort of industry standard and an
overhaul of the current condom lines, all without letting the public in
on their new sizing policies. Additionally, Yarber’s plan would have the
true-to-life Magnum man in a pinch: his previously large-enough condoms would
suddenly be a tight fit.

Ultimately, if men want a condom that fits —
and it’s much more about girth than length, if that helps — then
they’ll have to band together and demand more accurate sizes from the
condom companies. At the very least it should make for one heck of a
protest.

There are products where smallness is a marketing virtue, like cellphones or
thong underwear. But small condoms are a marketing nightmare. If advertising is about creating consumer desire, who aspires to a size extra-small?

The result is a condom aisle at the drug store where all the men, a la Lake Wobegon, are “above average.” But the status quo may have dire public health implications.

According to the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, 45
percent of men reported that
they had experienced an ill-fitting condom within the last three months.

The misfits were significantly more likely to report breakage
and slippage, along with difficulty reaching orgasm, both for their
partners and for themselves, and a host of other sexual mishaps. Not
surprisingly, men with ill-fitting condoms were more likely to take them
off before sex was even over — all of which adds up to a massive failure
for the one job a condom exists to fulfill.

Aside from a realistic range
of sizes, there is a dizzying amount of condom variety. A non-exhaustive
list: ribbed, for her/his pleasure, studded, lubricated, extra thin,
scented, textured, unscented, flavored, extended pleasure, colored,
with/without spermicide, glow in the dark, lamb skin, warming. But aside
from the machismo-imbued “Magnum” designation, you’d be hard-pressed to
find any size labels. What’s a modestly
endowed guy to do? And perhaps more importantly, are the condom
manufacturers being irresponsible by not being transparent in their
sizing? Do they even make small condoms?

In fact, there is some
size variation in condoms, but it’s couched in jargon. LifeStyles has by
far the most direct code, called “Snugger Fit.” Here is a
sizing chart for Durex condoms.

Trojan seems to
have recalibrated its sizes a la Starbucks (and there is something
appealing, if patronizing, about the idea of buying a “Tall” condom when
in fact it’s the opposite). The company organizes
its products by Regular, Large, and Extra Large. Ah, so the
regular is actually a small? Wrong. The regular is actually regular — 35 of their
42 lines fall under this category — not exactly following the bell
curve.

Buying condoms online neatly sidesteps this entire mess, though even on the ostensibly private and shame-proof internet, a
comparison of the smaller
condom selection vs. the large
condom offerings is instructive. But condoms tend to be
unplanned, impulse buys — hence the rather limited number of bulk
purchases, despite considerable savings and a condom’s 3-5 year
lifespan.

So what’s to be done? It’s tricky territory. TheyFit
Condoms offers seventy different sizes (none of which
are labeled “small”), and guarantees a “custom” condom. But in order to
enjoy that superlative fit, you’ll have to measure,
and carefully at that. The site thoughtfully warns, “Watch out for
paper cuts!”

Spray-on
condoms seemed promising, but the latex doesn’t dry quickly enough
for the understandably impatient consumer. Dr. Bill Yarber, of the
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in
Indiana, recommends
re-labeling small condoms as “large”, regular as “extra-large” and
so on. But this would require some sort of industry standard and an
overhaul of the current condom lines, all without letting the public in
on their new sizing policies. Additionally, Yarber’s plan would have the
true-to-life Magnum man in a pinch: his previously large-enough condoms would
suddenly be a tight fit.

Ultimately, if men want a condom that fits —
and it’s much more about girth than length, if that helps — then
they’ll have to band together and demand more accurate sizes from the
condom companies. At the very least it should make for one heck of a
protest.

(Image: israelavila/flickr)

Eight states are introducing
a program that will allow tenth graders who pass a series of tests to jump
straight to community college. It’s not an entirely surprising move, since the American educational
philosophy since World War II can be summed up thus: get
kids to college. It’s a noble and well-meaning goal, but it’s folly to funnel more kids to higher education without questioning some of the system’s basic assumptions. Lets start with one big question: are we keeping them
there too long?

A U.S. college education is a four-year, full-time endeavor, and an
increasing number of students are extending it even longer. And that’s
just
undergrad — any worthwhile graduate degree will set you back a few more
years. It’s no longer
clear what students are gaining from such a long and intensive
education.

For a student deciding whether or not to attend university,
a four-year commitment can be overwhelming — and extraordinarily pricey.
Tuition is, as always, skyrocketing. It has increased, beyond general inflation, an average of 4.9 percent a year in the last decade at public universities.

Students not blessed with wealthy parents or scholarship opportunities
are forced to take out loans to finance their educations — huge, staggering
loans that regularly break six figures. The average graduate in 2007 carried a debt exceeding $20,000, a 6 percent rise from 2006. It’s much too much. A shorter time to graduate would dramatically ease the load, as well as allow the student to begin
repayment earlier and get out of debt earlier.

And not all graduating students are 22, either. The
powers-that-be in the education world can’t afford to ignore community colleges
any longer. These schools are now supplying about 20 percent of the
traditional four-year college student body, and nearly 6.2 million students were enrolled in community colleges in 2006-07. Students transferring from
community colleges aren’t usually forced to attend the full four years, but
more often than not, some credits aren’t accepted, and, if they’re lucky, they’re
looking at a five year education. This can be incredibly resource-expensive, especially
for mature students and those who have dependents. If we really want to
increase college attendance, we have to lower the barrier of entry in time and money.

What about the quality of education —
would it suffer? It needn’t. Firstly, there’s no reason a tiered system can’t
be put in place. In Ontario, many universities offer a full bachelor’s degree in
three years; an honors degree is earned with a fourth. It’s not a complicated
proposal: let the students who can afford it stick around, offer scholarships
to the promising ones who can’t, and don’t penalize everyone else. Secondly —
and this is especially true in the liberal arts — there’s a diminishing return
at play in higher education. I’m a big proponent of the
value of a liberal arts education, and I’m not promoting cutting or limiting
disciplines. But the fact remains that in most colleges students are primed to
succeed by earning grades, not by amassing knowledge; by senior year, they’ve
usually discovered their level of maximum efficiency, how to get the best
possible marks with the least possible effort. Senioritis isn’t exclusive to
high school.

What about the sciences? Here, too, reform is in order. The
countries that are serving as the models for the new high school plan — including
Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore — all approach higher education
differently, as well; these countries are successful because of the holistic
approach they bring to education, and, likewise, we can’t attack this problem
in piecemeal. Students in those countries (and really almost everywhere but
here) begin their professional training — what we would call graduate school —
right out of the gate. Students studying the sciences now realistically require a
graduate degree to be competitive, so why aren’t colleges integrating
undergraduate and graduate programs better? Why are we making it more difficult
and expensive for a student to pursue a science education, especially when we’re
relying on precisely these future industries? We need incentives, not barriers.

Many regard college as a four-year utopia, a long and drawn-out
preface to real life. Maybe it’s even, as they say, a party occasionally interrupted
by class. But as it stands, that party is simply too long, diluted, and expensive. Sometimes the best parties end early.

On Saturday, director Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest airlines flight in order to preserve the “safety and comfort of all customers,” i.e., for being too fat. He didn’t take it sitting down.

Smith tweeted,
with characteristic color,
his frustrations throughout the ordeal. Through the magic of Twitter,
Southwest responded,
contacted the director, and apologized
(but stuck to their “Customer of
Size” policies).

The Smith/Southwest fiasco is being touted
as the latest evidence in the awesome power of Twitter, the one playing
field that consumers can take on the Goliaths of the corporate world
and emerge victorious; it’s @ThatKevinSmith
vs. @SouthwestAir, and RTs are the weapon
of choice.

But
this notion is misguided at best. Kevin Smith is a powerful figure on
Twitter with more than 1.6 million followers. Kevin Smith’s tweets were
so effective because he’s Kevin Smith; the fact that Twitter provided
the bandwidth is incidental. Twitter is not a wholly democratic
shouting platform – it’s merely celebrity in a new medium. The average
Joe Beergut who tries to tweet his way into an airline’s good graces
isn’t likely to succeed.

But Kevin Smith’s indignation reverberated
loudly in the Twittersphere, and within hours, Southwest found itself
with a doozy of a PR problem. Perhaps, you might counter, Twitter is
important precisely because it gives such a forum to those that would
otherwise be denied. And that’s true, to an extent — it’s often useful for consumer complaints, for example. But this claim is a
far cry from empowering the regular individual. Here
is an unofficial list of the top Twitter users: you have to go way, way
down to find someone who isn’t a celebrity or a corporation. Yes,
Twitter does provide an open platform, even if it occasionally
resembles a verbal cage match with millions of rowdy participants. But
it’s dishonest to claim that the service is really anything more than
just that.

Twitter itself isn’t all-powerful. It merely empowers
a small, already-privileged group of celebrities who might, if
sufficiently pissed off, can really grab an airline’s attention. Now if it could just do something to make those seats a bit wider…

For most of the world, the Winter Olympics is a spectacle of strange sports (curling) and even stranger names (luge). For the host Canadians, it’s a rare and glorious shot at world domination through sacred winter sports like hockey.

So when economist and Olympic prognosticator Daniel Johnson predicted Canada is poised to be top dog, you might expect the country to be thumping its collective shoulder pads in celebration. But hold off on the celebratory poutine. Medal predictions are tricky, perhaps more of an art than a science, and it’s not clear that economists or anyone else using objective data are best suited for the endeavor.

Does home field advantage matter? Do you take individual sports and athletes into account, or look at broad demographic trends?

The most important number, by far, is a country’s past medal count. That is the benchmark of all Olympic medal predictions, and it’s often hard to beat. (Here’s a handy interactive graphic for medal winners at all Summer games since its inception in 1896, and here’s a less glitzy database for both Games.) Putting aside boycott years like 1980 and 1984, not much changes, and when it does, it’s instantly noticeable. China had a massive jump in their medal haul from 2004 to 2008, mostly due to enormous infrastructure improvements and vast amounts of resources that the country pumped into athlete developments for the Beijing Games.

Daniel Johnson, who is himself a Canadian with a reported love for curling, doesn’t factor individual sports or athletes into his calculations. Johnson uses per capita income, population, political structure, climate, and home field advantage to construct his model. (Yes, the latter is statistically significant: the host country earns 1.8% more medals than it would otherwise.) Johnson’s predicted results? Twenty seven medals for Canada, followed by 26 each for the United States and Norway.

His previous accuracy has been highlighted by the press, but it’s a bit misleading. For example, Johnson claims he predicted the total number medals by country in the 2008 Beijing games with 93 percent accuracy, but simply using the Athens totals as a control predictor will beat Johnson’s predictions for eight of the top ten countries. And of those other two countries, his U.S. prediction (103) beat the Athens number by one measly medal, and foreseeing China’s vast improvement hardly merited a distinguished prophet award.

There are various ways to valuate Olympic success. Some use the total number of gold through bronze, and others only the gold medals. Given the competitive spirit of the games, it’s best to stick to bragging rights: who beats whom in the rankings of total medals won. For instance, even if the US wins fewer medals than they did in Turin, but are still ahead of Canada, Germany and the others, it will be hailed as a victory. By this measure, Johnson’s work on the Beijing games is even less impressive: he only nailed the top three – US, China, and Russia, which are as close to no-brainers as you can get.

To measure the boldness in Johnson’s Vancouver predictions, an instructive rubric would be the major departures from performances in Turin in 2006. That means his calls on Sweden, Norway, and Germany (changes of +7, +11, and -9, respectively) are probably more significant than his forecast of a three-medal Canadian improvement. Still, Canada has never been the top medal-earner so he deserves some credit for boldly predicting a win for the home team.

If you can’t trust an economist, who can you trust? The market, obviously. Betfair, a British prediction market, has Germany as the 5/4 favorite for the most medals, Canada second at 12/5, and the US is third, with odds of 9/2. Hubdub, a prediction market that uses virtual money, says Canada has a 52 percent chance to finish with the most medals, followed by Germany (29%), and US (18%).

There are other methods to predict Olympic medal counts. Individual sport by sport analysis is the more traditional approach. USA Today predicts Canada will come out on top with a whopping 34 medals, which would be one of the greatest Olympic improvements in modern times. The Associated Press made its own forecasts for individual sports, and has Canada on top with 30 medals, followed by Germany and the US with 27 apiece.

The oddsmakers aren’t shying away from making predictions, either. Ladbrokes has Germany on top, just ahead of Canada, with the US a distant third.

Canadians should be cautiously optimistic with these Olympic predictions. But, as a Canadian, I can tell you we would gladly forgo the most medals or golds for the only thing that really matters: hockey supremacy.

If you predict global financial catastrophe and are proven right,
sometimes you have to pay the price in the form of an ominous moniker.
Economist Nouriel Roubini, widely credited with anticipating the recent
financial crisis, was christened “Dr. Doom”
by no less an authority than the New York Times. The notorious nickname
has helped Roubini become a global economic rockstar, recently seen
partying with models in St Barts.

But now the good doctor is looking for a change. He recently expressed displeasure with “Dr. Doom,” and proposed an outlandishly terrible alternative: Dr. Realism.

Roubini may understand financial meltdowns, but he doesn’t seem
to get the simple economics of nicknames: They have to be earned, and
can’t be discarded on a whim, especially when they’re good. The name of the original Dr Doom,
a Marvel Comics supervillain, was described by creator Stan Lee as
“eloquent in its simplicity — magnificent in its implied menace.”

Putting Roubini’s meddling aside
– and assigning yourself a nickname is a major faux pas – if he wants
to rebrand himself, he shouldn’t do a half-baked job. No one is
ever going to mention Dr. Realism outside of the sentence “This
economist known Dr. Doom is trying to call himself Dr. Realism.” His
choice is a veritable lesson in nickname don’ts. To wit:

— Do not choose something boring. You don’t want your nickname to
quietly sum you up; you want bling. And Dr. Realism is the nickname
equivalent of a tweed jacket with a matching sweater vest. Roubini
might as well call himself Dr. I-Told-You-So. (Actually, that’s not
bad.)

— Do not think small. Even “The Realist” is definitely an
improvement, or “The Pragmatist.” A mere Ph.D. isn’t going to cut it,
especially compared with the vivid original.

—Do not take nickname advice from CNBC viewers.This should be self-explanatory. Ask Maria Bartiromo how much she likes being called “Money Honey.”

It’s easy to see where Roubini is coming from: Who wants to be
perpetually known as the bearer of bad news? But nicknames are not to
be trifled with by their bearers, and attempts to do so will inevitably
backfire. And as much as Roubini may detest the handle Dr. Doom, I’m
sure he won’t consider “The Doctor Formerly Known as Doom” an
improvement.

The Apple iPad is finally a reality rather than a rumor. It’s sleek and sexy and the press is salivating over the future of touch-screen computing. But who will buy this thing?

I predict that there is one demographic that will gobble up Apple’s new toy: College students.
Here’s why the iPad is going to be the biggest campus fad since … well, the last thing Apple made.

1. Books
Apple hasn’t yet released the particulars of its iBook app, but it
heralds a potential textbook revolution for three reasons. First, if the online store allows chapters to be purchased
individually, professors and students will enjoy unprecedented freedom to assign chapters rather than volumes. That would be welcome news for cash-strapped students since textbooks
can easily run $300 or more a semester, even though much of the content goes unread.  

Second, integrated graphics in a textbook will be another education
revolution. Physics, math chemistry, economics, etc. — these subjects
are so thoroughly enhanced by graphics that I’m already getting jealous of all the kids who will grow up in an e-textbook age.
Imagine a physics app that allows you to learn dynamics by toying with
variables and seeing the real-time result, or a biology graphic
displaying the mitosis process. It’s so much more intuitive than text
or a static picture. What’s more, e-textbooks can be updated. In 2008, when I
was an economics major, the field was being rewritten, and sections of
our books seemed almost archaic. Publishers no longer have to
continually issue new editions. They’ll just upload updates online to be retrieved wirelessly.

Third, beyond
graphics, an e-textbook allows yet another layer of interactivity.
Students could save their own notes in the tablet, flagged to the relevant passage in the text, while teachers could make available online chapters with the professors’ annotations built in.

2. Media
College students watch a lot of TV (surprise!). What you might not know if you didn’t recently graduate is that today they watch nearly all of it on computers, streaming from an online source. Often it’s while supine
in bed, the laptop precariously balanced on some pillow or edged between their legs. It’s not ideal, to say the least. But the iPad allows in-bed TV viewing to be as
straightforward as reading a paperback. Students are not going to admit
it, but this is going to be a major selling point — and likely a major
boon for iTunes, which rents and sells movies and television episodes.

3. Price
At $499-829, the iPad isn’t cheap. But there’s a sort of genius behind
the pricing scheme. To the college student, $499 for the low-end model
— which has 16 GB and only wi-fi, no 3G — will seem like a comparative
steal. The
extra memory is a luxury, because a lot of college students already have dedicated music players, computers and external hard drives. Moreover, most campuses are entirely wireless, making a 3G connection redundant. If textbook savings are taken into account, and if
there’s a keyboard dock suitable for longer typing, then the iPad starts to
look like a veritable steal.

If history serves as a guide, Apple will market heavily to the college crowd. And if history repeats itself, the college crowd will respond, in droves. Like sweatpants, shower flip flops and meal plans, the iPad could become a college staple. Professors, prepare yourselves for the
mother of all classroom distractions.