Three cheers for racism

Apparently not everyone thinks it's such a good idea that Southern universities are trying to distance themselves from certain aspects of their Southern heritage -- namely slavery, or the Klan -- in an attempt to make their campuses more attractive to prospective students from minority groups and other parts of the country.

"I think they ought to leave it the way it is," said Dr. David W. Aiken, an alumnus who is an orthopedic surgeon in Metairie, La. "I wouldn't be for changing anything. I think they're doing quite well. What is the purpose of making it a more national school? Do I want kids from California, New York coming there? Not really."

Right, because the whole point of the academy is to create a cloistered environment where students and faculty won't be exposed to diverse viewpoints and feel comfortable with frank exploration of weighty issues. That sounds like my kind of university.

Honestly, this whole "the Confederacy is part of our heritage" song and dance is about 140 years out of date. You don't exactly see German universities retaining swastikas in their logos and keeping buildings named for Hitler, Goebbels, etc., with the candy-ass excuse that "the Third Reich is part of our history."

Sure, Nazism is a part of German history, just like the Confederacy is for the South. But Germans tend not to draw attention to the fact that their forerunners murdered 12 million Jews and members of other undesirable groups, since most people prefer not to glorify tyrannical, racist regimes.

And that whole argument about how the Confederacy represented states rights is just window dressing. Yeah, the Confederacy wanted to protect states rights. Like the right to hold hundreds of thousands of people in bondage simply due to the color of their skin.

But hey, if you want to keep touting your "heritage," go right ahead. You keep your Stars and Bars and your white gowns. Just keep on calling attention to your bigotry.

National birds

Pardoned Turkey Is Going to Disneyland

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 22, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys, and they are headed for Disneyland.

Indicted vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and his puppetmaster, Karl Rove, are being shipped to Disneyland in California, where Rove will serve as grand marshall of the annual holiday parade.

Previous national traitors spared by the president also got to spend the rest of their days in Orange County, where former President Richard M. Nixon escaped public scrutiny after the Watergate scandal.

The 185-pound Libby was raised on the side lawn of the White House during the Reagan administration. Bush says the bird's probably going to feel pretty good ''strutting around sunny California scot free.''

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

Dick "I'm Dick Cheney yes I'm the real Cheney all you other Dick Cheneys are just palpitating" Cheney supports "vigorous debate" and finds criticism of the war in Iraq fair game.

Just don't go claiming the president lied about intelligence reports to lead the country into war.

"Senator John McCain put it best: it is a lie to say that the president lied to the American people," Mr. Cheney said.

Good for him.

And good for Dick. I'm glad to see he still professes to uphold democratic principles while he does his damnedest to undermine them.

Why I hate the Ivy League

This article really seems to describe all the things I hate about the Yale and Harvard types.

At one fraternity gathering, where upholstered chairs had been hauled in and set up on the grass, girls in cable-knit sweaters swigged from bottles of Champagne, some of them perched on the laps of boys wearing tweed jackets and glassy-eyed expressions. It was slightly before noon. Most of them remained there through the first half of the game.

You can dress a pig in a tweed blazer and give it an Ivy League education, but it remains, fundamentally, a pig.

Do the math

In case you missed it, a recording surfaced online this week of a rap song some students at the University of Miami (Fl.) made. The song made by the "7th Floor Crew," which included members of the school's football team, was noteworthy for its vulgarly misogynistic lyrics, which evidently describe group sex by multiple men with individual women, and other extremely offensive terms that demean women.

Although, apparently, the track begins with someone saying, "This song in its entirety is not meant to disrespect any women, in its entirety. Well, you know what I mean. All right, play the track."

Uh, yeah.

The song has become a national story, though, due to the participation by the aforementioned members of the Hurricanes football team, a program historically known for the less than exemplary off-field behavior of its players.

Still, college football pundits seem more than willing to mitigate the impact of the song, if not defend its creators, on the Miami football program.

I particularly enjoyed this screed, which wistfully regrets that five years of work to restore the integrity of the football program has evidently been jeopardized by a 9-minute rap song:

It should be noted that the song is said to be 2 years old. You can decide for yourself what the statute of limitations should be on misogyny.

Hmm. Now, call me crazy, call me capable of using a calculator, but if the song really is two years old, doesn't that mean it still was produced in the middle of this apparent "restoration of integrity" supposedly going on for the past five years? It would seem to me that it's perfectly fair for this to taint the current administration, even if this wasn't hot of the presses.

Moreover, one current football player, Sinorice Moss, made the following appraisal of the song when asked about it Wednesday:

That's something that they did like two years ago. A couple of the freshmen and older guys made a rap song. It was a really cool song.

Really cool. So, even if the current crop of football players hasn't produced anything so offensive in, oh, two years, they still see nothing wrong with demeaning women.

Yeah, it sounds like that program has really done wonders to restore its integrity.

Then again, in fairness, I'd say that this probably doesn't vary dramatically from the attitudes of the vast majority of football players at this level or above, which is just another reason why football is a lousy sport. In addition to it being really boring to watch.

Alma nutter

I can't figure out which part of this disturbs me most.

A. Hanson came to speak at my alma mater.
B. People still turn out in numbers to see Hanson.
C. People turned out to see Hanson speak.
D. Hanson is still being taken seriously.
E. Hanson was ever taken seriously.

While the message they're evidently trumpeting about the need to fight the major label scene in the recording industry is laudable, it's just hard to hear it coming from three teeny-bopping brothers from Oklahoma who played wholesome music.

Especially when they make stupid remarks.

The lyric “Just a figure in a big monopoly game,” from the song “Strong Enough to Break,” “is not a reference to Milton Bradley,” Isaac said. “It’s a reference to corporate monopoly.”

Thanks a lot, Captain Obvious.

In fairness, it's probably not safe to assume that every college student knows what a monopoly is, even at a prestigious university. Or that the three Hansons -- I refuse to use the words "Hanson" and "brothers" in proximity to refer to these three, since they're an unworthy namesake of the star line of the Charlestown Chiefs in "Slapshot" -- know that "Monopoly" is from Parker Brothers, not Milton Bradley.

Truth in "Mission Accomplished"

The headline from Sport says it all:

Mise splněna, Češi jsou po 16 letech na MS

Roughly translated, that's be: "Mission Accomplished, After 16 years Czechs Are in World Cup"

Czech Republic 1, Norway 0

On to Germany.

Olé, olé, olé!

Does this qualify me for hazard pay?

As some of you may be aware, I'm currently in my first quarter as a TA. It's not bad, particularly since the assignment I've drawn this quarter, U.S. military history, isn't much of a demand on my time. I don't have to lead discussion sections, I hold two office hours a week that no one has yet attended, there's a single 600-page textbook (the sum total of reading for the entire course), and just a single midterm plus a final exam, as listed on the syllabus. (More on that in a moment.)

The one major drawback, or at least it would like more of one if I wasn't already taking a course in my own field that meets at 9:30 a.m. daily, is that the lectures are at 8:30 a.m., Monday through Friday.

Now, I'm not totally unsympathetic to the students. I mean, it wasn't so many years ago that I was an undergrad and the thought of any course before 11 made me think twice (since I'd have to get up before 10 and there was some psychological aversion to waking up at a single-digit hour not appended by p.m.). Sure, I took a few courses that met before 10. Two to be exact. Both my senior year. One a required course not offered at any other time. (Plus there was the course that met at 8:30 twice a week my junior year, though I dropped that midway through the term once I decided to drop my journalism major altogether.) And I distinctly remember how I mentally discounted any classes in the course catalog that met at 9. Once I even consciously decided not to take a class I wanted and would've otherwise taken, French history from 1789-1815, for the singular reason that I didn't want to get up at 9 a.m. three times a week.

So, I look at these undergrads and have to admire them for braving an 8:30 class. The professor who teaches this class is also sympathetic. I think 8:30 is a bit earlier than he'd prefer to have it if he had his druthers, but the time was assigned.

And I also recall from being an undergraduate the easy temptation to skip class and sleep in. Particularly in large lecture courses where attendance wasn't taken, where there was no participation component, where the course grade was based solely on two exams. I mean, I had an art history class not unlike that at the beginning of my freshman year that met twice a week in the afternoon, but I took to skipping it roughly midway through once I decided 1) I was getting absolutely nothing out of going to lecture other than dozing off and 2) I'd rather sleep in my own bed if I was going to be unconscious those three hours a week. Actually, about half the time I just went to work earlier, reasoning that I was better off earning about $9, or whatever it worked out to after taxes for the hour and a half spent on the job.

Anyway, the point of that long and rambling introduction is to say that I sympathize fully with students not making it to lecture regularly. I think I'd have a much harder time summoning the motivation myself if I didn't have a class right after taught by my adviser that's really crucial. A couple of weeks ago when my adviser cancelled two classes after the midterm since he went to a conference, I wound up skipping my TA lecture one day. It happens.

But being on the other side now, this doesn't mean that undergrad attendance patterns don't provide me a certain amusement.

To wit, I received the following e-mail this afternoon from a student:

Hey Scott,

I was curious when our 2nd midterm is. Honestly, I come to class sporadically and I haven't heard a single mention about it, is this because we are only having a midterm and a final? Also, I was curious how I could find out about my grade on the last midterm, do I have to come to your office hours???

Sincerely,
[name omitted]

A few remarks. First, I'm just glad the student in question didn't call me by the other TA's name, as an earlier e-mail from a different student did. It's good to know that the students have half a clue as to who I am, though my interaction with students is admittedly low. (Of course, if any of them bothered to come to office hours, that might change.)

Second, can't you just hear the student pleading wistfully, "Please don't make me come to class at 8:30 in the morning!"

Third, as anyone who bothered to read the syllabus can tell, there's only one midterm and one final. Now, there might be some confusion created by the home page for the course, which has a syllabus from a previous year when the class was structured slighly differently and had two midterms and a final. But, one would hope that the student in question had looked at the actual hardcopy syllabus received on Day 1.

Still, it's fun to see students betray how little they've come to class or done on their own. Our prof actually moved back the date of the midterm, which was listed all along as "tentative" on the syllabus. The date change had been announced daily for at least the week prior to the exam. Nonetheless, we still had one student come up at the end of class the day before the original exam date, asking questions about test content, and then finally he asked the prof whether it was still tomorrow, which prompted a rather incredulous sound from the prof, who informed him that it was Friday and then inquired as to when the last time was the student came to class.

And you get more of that on the actual day listed for the midterm on the syllabus. Attendance spikes, and a few people look perplexed when they don't see other people reaching for bluebooks.

So, I guess the only sporting thing to do in regard to this particular inquiry is to promise to bring the student's exam to tomorrow's class. I mean, that would be the obvious time to return an assignment ... although I think I'd be more embarrassed that it's now been nearly two weeks since we first returned exams, and we even announced at the midterm the day when we would return them, and still this student has clearly not been to class once in that period.

In any event, I won't have any particular sympathy when it comes time for me to grade the student's final, since it's not like the student has made a demonstrative effort to come to class and learn. Though I do admire the candor of confessing regular absence.

Survival of the fittest

In an encouraging victory for intelligent -- not intelligently designed -- people everywhere, voters in Dover, Penn., swept from office school board members who called for the introduction of "intelligent design" theory into the district's biology curriculum.

Really, it's a refreshing manifestation of natural selection in the democratic process -- normally not known for producing the fittest elected officials (see Congress) -- since the old board clearly was composed of individuals who had no business choosing a science curriculum since they had no ability to do so intelligently.

And to stretch the metaphor still further, had these officials not been voted out of office, the repercussions of passing along bad knowledge of science to future generations of students would have left their students unable to compete and survive in the wider world, which would have caused them to have trouble entering university, obtaining desirable jobs, finding suitable mates, producing offspring, etc. Such is the natural order of things.

Thirty million Canadians can't be wrong

Some refreshing honesty from a bizarre workers comp case involving a minor league hockey player injured in a fight his coach told him to start:

"This court finds that fighting is an integral part of hockey," Emmert said. "Thirty million Canadians could have told you that."

Nary a Ron 'Mea' Kulpa

"World Series crew chief Joe West defended umpires against criticism of their postseason performance, saying "I think we did just fine."

Well, sure. Yes, the umpires got the vast majority of calls right. But this postseason was particularly memorable for the unusually high number of blown calls in significant spots. Or, for the cynical, the unusually high number of blown calls in significant spots that benefited the White Sox.

Missed calls are certainly a part of the sport, and I doubt I'd be complaining much if the Angels had been the beneficiaries of all those calls, though I like to think I'd be more willing to acknowledge that they caught a bunch of breaks, unlike the bitterly defensive and hyper-sensitive Sox fans who seem unwilling to do that much.

Anyway, the disappointing thing in this story is that there hasn't been any admission by any umpire or umpiring supervisor that calls were missed, and badly. I know they're only human, and mistakes happen, but it'd be nice to see some ump with the honesty to admit that, "Yeah, I totally missed that call. My bad."

Sure, they don't want to invite second guessing, though the innumerable replays have already done that much. But I know from experience that I always gained respect for umpires who fessed up to their mistakes. Plus, it was surprisingly effective in defusing a lot of frustration, just to have confirmation from the source that he blew it.

Evidently these umps need to demonstrate a certain machismo.