Tidbits
on February 26, 2005
Bob
Jensen at Trinity
University
For
earlier editions of New Bookmark
s go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Archives of Tidits: Tidbits Directory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words
to enter --- Search Site.
This search engine may get you some hits from
other professors at Trinity University included with Bob Jensen's documents, but
this may be to your benefit.
This
edition features, at the bottom, "Ten Things Bob Jensen's Done That You've
Never Done."
I've not ordered one
just yet, but I'm thinking . . . still thinking . . . I wonder?
Men, are you tired of the time, trouble and expense of having a girlfriend?
Irritated by the difficulty of finding a new one? Eberhard Schöneburg,
the chief executive of the software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, may
have found the answer: a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne who goes wherever you
go.
Keith Bradsher, "Sad, Lonely? For a Good Time, Call Vivienne," The
New York Times, February 24, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/VirtualFriend
Say What? Are liberals in academe listening to Ted Kennedy?
"We're in some areas of confrontation, but my own sense is that this
president knows how to work with Democrats. He worked with Democrats in Texas. I
worked with him on No Child Left Behind."
Time Magazine, February 23, 2005 --- http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1030924,00.html
)
In fact, just such a momentous law has been passed
and is now being implemented. But as painful as it is for me, a progressive
Democrat, to acknowledge, it was a conservative Republican president who passed
the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and it is traditionally Democratic
education groups and activists who decry the law as intrusive federal meddling.
And true to the confusing and peculiar politics of education reform, instead of
embracing the laudable goals of NCLB-and joining in a bipartisan effort to
repair its flaws-the institutional players in education and their allies have
put their energy into fighting it. To veterans of the education wars at the
state level, this peculiar political situation comes as no surprise. In state
battles over reforming schools, liberal and conservative labels have lost their
meaning. Instead, the battle lines are drawn between those who are willing to
take on powerful institutional interests and contemplate systemic change and
those who are not.
Mark Roosevelt, "Real reform By Mark Roosevelt," Boston
Globe, February 20, 2005 --- http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1030924,00.html
Educating the Next Generation
Today's students have different expectations and skills with regard to
technology, and colleges sometimes fail to meet those expectations or understand
what those skills mean, according to a new e-book. The e-book, the first
published by Educause, is Educating the Net Generation. It is available
free on the organization's Web
site. Diana G. Oblinger, a vice president of Educause and co-editor of
the book, answered some questions about its themes in an e-mail interview.
Oblinger concludes: "What we hope
this book will do is encourage colleges and universities to think about who
their current generation of learners are and the implications for courses,
curricula, services and support. There is no one right answer for everyone. And,
there are many things we don't yet understand. But as more institutions explore
the implications we'll all be able to do a better job making learners
successful."
Scott Jaschick, "'Educating the Net Generation'," Inside Higher Ed,
February 25, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/insider/educating_the_net_generation
For those who thought Ted Williams was crazy
when he made a death wish
Other microbes have been discovered in similar
frigid environments, sometimes clinging to pockets of liquid water in ice packs.
And some microbes survive in ice as spores, but they need to be cultured to
bring them to life. NASA described the newfound critter as "the first
fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice."
"Creatures Frozen for 32,000 Years Still Alive," MSNBC News,
February 24, 2005 --- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7019473/
The chilling
effect on free inquiry may harm everyone or so some say
The reaction to this
controversy from outside higher education brings into relief professors' tone
deafness as to how non-academic figures interpret such comments. It came as
little surprise that neoconservative iconoclast Andrew
Sullivan defended the Harvard president. But so too did the liberal editorial
pages of The Washington Post and, less enthusiastically, The Boston
Globe. The Post concluded that if "Summers loses his job for the crime of
positing a politically incorrect hypothesis -- or even if he pays some lesser
price for it -- the chilling effect on free inquiry will harm everyone."
K.C. Johnson, "Summers Beyond Harvard," Inside Higher Ed,
February 25, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/summers_beyond_harvard
Jensen Comment: Balony! He behaved irresponsibly as President of
Harvard University. Only unchecked grade inflation at Harvard can save his
job.
With
respect to Dean Karnazes who ran 262 miles in 75 hours and is shooting for a
300 mile run
People who run distances they ought to be driving
aren't necessarily superior athletes. They are actually a bit freaky
physically, born with the kind of biomechanics that can take repeated pounding .
. . "Ultra marathoners eventually burn fat, and women have a higher
percentage of body fat than men do, giving them more endurance. They also
benefit from the hormone estrogen which may act like an antioxidant, preventing
their muscles from breakdown.
Bill Saporito, :Born to Run---For 300 Miles," Time Magazine,
February 28, 2005, Page 61 --- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029875,00.html
This site
also has some great links to professorial blogs.
I'm always relieved when students drop. I hate giving out low grades.
These and other comments regarding dropping of a course --- http://www.cheekyprof.com/archives/2005/02/theyre_starting.php
Also see
"Cut-rate parasite A traveling professor's guide to missing the point"
at http://journey-man.blogspot.com/
By Any Other Name:
Sounds a bit like the titles of old Russian Commissars
The Arizona Republic reports that the Scottsdale school
district is adopting fancy new titles for many of its employees. Barbara Levine,
who "used to be known as the receptionist," is now the "Director
of First Impressions," which we guess means she's allowed to ignore anyone
she already knows who comes into the office. The bus driver is now called the
"Transporter of Learners," and the assistant superintendent for
elementary schools is (take a breath)
"Executive Director for Elementary Schools and
Excelling Teaching and Learning."
Opinion Journal, February 24, 2005
Not so free speech in Iran
Iranian authorities have recently clamped down on
the growing popularity of weblogs, restricting access to major blogging sites
from within Iran. A second Iranian blogger, Motjaba Saminejad, who also
used his website to report on bloggers' arrests, is still being held.
"Iran jails blogger for 14 years," BBC News, February 23, 2005
--- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4292399.stm
Where is
there a line in the sands of ethics?
But at the time, Dr.
Hitchcock faced a state ethics inquiry into accusations that she offered to
steer a campus construction contract to a developer, who in exchange would pay
to endow a university professorship that she could fill once she left her job as
college president, according to state officials familiar with the ethics review.
Michael Slackman, "Case of Former SUNY Official Points to Ethics Law
Loophole," The New York Times, February 25, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/nyregion/25ethics.html
Jensen Comment: Steering construction in exchange for funding her professorship is
clearly unethical. However, what if she was a full professor who merely
had friends or family fund her professorship that would live on long after she
departed from the university? I know of at least two instances where this
has happened, and in both of those cases I don't think it was wrong. If
Professor Lazy Dumb did this, I would probably have concerns. But in
the instances I know of these were highly competent and valuable faculty
members. Also millions more were given to the university beyond the
portions devoted to fund the endowed chairs. My conclusion is that this is a case of situational
ethics except in egregious violations like that alleged in the case of Dr.
Hitchcock.
Related Links
"Questions at SUNY Albany on Why Ex-President Left," by Al
Baker and Michael Slackman, The New York Times, February 26, 2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/nyregion/26ethics.html?
"Case of Former SUNY Official Points to Ethics
Law Loophole," by Michael Slackman, he New York Times, February 26,
2005 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/nyregion/25ethics.html
64.75 million years late with Lamisil
After a meteor slammed into the Earth 65 million years
ago, "the great dying" began, decimating life in the oceans and
killing off the dinosaurs -- with mysteriously little effect on mammals.
Conjecture over what did in the reptiles has long fascinated everyone from
school children to paleontologists, but a new theory suggests that a less
earth-shaking possibility could have played a role. "The forests went
out. The fungi proliferated, and the Earth became a giant compost pile. An
enormous number of spores were released," said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, an
infectious disease researcher who proposed last month that air thick with fungal
spores after the meteor hit could have overwhelmed animals' immune systems,
causing sickness and death. If he's right, the large numbers of warm-blooded
mammals and birds that survived the mass extinction might have had a natural
advantage -- body temperatures too hot for fungal infections to take hold.
Carolyn Y. Johnson, "Were the dinosaurs done in by fungus?" Boston
Globe, February 22, 2005 --- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2005/02/22/were_the_dinosaurs_done_in_by_fungus/
Inmates Running Asylum'
A report into the imminent collapse of Media Lab Europe, a research center
jointly owned by the Irish government and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, describes an environment of managerial and financial chaos.
Media Lab Europe, a pet project of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, closed this
month after the government and MIT couldn't agree on who should foot the
mounting bill for its survival.
"Report: MIT's Doomed Media Lab Europe Suffered from 'Inmates Running
Asylum'," MIT's Technology Review, February 24, 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/02/ap/ap_022405.asp?trk=nl
Need to study a long argument between the
lovers?
It would be foolish to fault a Danielle Steel novel for its conventions. Writing
romance novels is her métier. Not the kind with the steamy clichés --
throbbing loins, moaning ecstasies -- but novels with glossy characters of
barely one dimension. The best episode in "Impossible" is a long
argument between the lovers, in which the occasionally sockless artist is
petulant and shrill. Like many arguments in novels -- there is a truly great one
in Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped" -- it has the ring of truth.
Not much else does here.
Stuart Ferguson when reviewing Daniell
Steele's latest book Impossible in The Wall Street Journal,
February 25, 2005
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110929104337163815,00.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal
Don't buy red-state chocolates or
shop at Wal-Mart: Does Labor's Tom really want to
force those hourly U.S. workers into unemployment and loss of employer health
plans by losing out to foreign
makers of chocolate? Tom Larken has heretofore always been the champion
of U.S. workers and their unions. Think of how many workers would be
thrown out of work if Wal-Mart failed because of a Democratic Party
boycott. Isn't this called cutting off your nose to spite your face?
No more kisses This Valentine's Day, Sen. Tom
Harkin, Iowa Democrat, encouraged the romantic sweethearts in his party not to
buy chocolates from three of the nation's biggest chocolate producers:
Hershey, Nestle and Mars. After all, he warned, all three are "red"
companies — purportedly supporters of President Bush and his policies. It's
not just Hershey's Kisses that Democrats were asked to give up. Outback
Steakhouse is similarly a target of the left, as are hundreds of Wal-Mart
stores that are "not so blue." And Democrats are pumping Hess
"blue gasoline" these partisan days. "You may have voted blue,
but...
Washington Times, February 25, 2005 --- http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050224-110953-1486r
As quoted from Free Republic on February 25, 2005
Jensen Comment: Not to
Worry: Wal-Mart profits are still ringing up at $20,000 per minute as
Iowa's Tom goes unheeded --- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/business/yourmoney/27count.html
She's not
clueless
"I always knew that Hunter was going to die before
me," Anita Thompson, 32, said of her 67-year-old husband.
Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 25
And in
this corner, weighing in at 244 lbs we have Judge Droolmouth
Judges Wrestle With Procreation and Gays
Headline, Associated Press, Feb. 24
Or mostly so
A new book says Abraham Lincoln was gay or mostly so,
and it's impossible to understand America's 16th president without accepting
that. The disagreement over Lincoln's sexuality pries into perhaps the
least-known, most private aspect of one of history's most scrutinized
figures. It also spotlights the obscure field of historiography--the study
of history and how it is written. Historiographers know history sees the
past through the prism of a current society's beliefs. What is notable
now, they say, is how fractured the current society's beliefs are. Drawing
to the fore one set of those beliefs, the subject of the disagreement, C.A.
Tripp's posthumously published "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln,"
was the culmination of gay and lesbian activism and scholarship in the 1990s,
said Illinois State Historian Thomas Schwartz. "This book," he
said, "would be written sometime, by someone." For gay and
lesbian scholars, Tripp's 2005 book shines brightly, calling into question
heterocentric tellings of the past.
James Janega, "Book trying to `out' Lincoln sparks civil war of
words," Chicago Tribune, February 26, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/LincolnFeb26
One
"Little Eichmann"
My brother Chris was a 1985 graduate of the University of Colorado, the father
of three young children and a compassionate, respectful and generous man. He
stood in defense of our environment, volunteered his time and money in support
of human rights, and gave unselfishly to help disadvantaged, vulnerable members
of our society. He spoke openly against unjust government policies, and followed
a private ethic of compassion. Chris was also a
U.S. government Treasury bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald,
and therefore by your definition was a "little Eichmann." At 8:46 a.m.
on Sept. 11, 2001, you claim that my beautiful...
"An Open Letter to Ward Churchill: My Brother, the 'Eichmann'," by
Michael Faughnan, September 11 Victims for Peaceful Tomorrows, February
16, 2005 --- http://pt.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=506
Bob Jensen's essay on "The Evil Empire" is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisyEvilEmpire.htm
I won't comment on this
one --- it sort of speaks for itself
Welcome to
DiscoverTheNetwork.
This site is a "Guide to the Political Left." It
identifies the individuals and organizations that make up the left and also the
institutions that fund and sustain it; it maps the paths through which the left
exerts its influence on the larger body politic; it defines the left's (often
hidden) programmatic agendas and it provides an understanding of its history and
ideas. The site is made up of two principal data elements along with a
powerful search engine to locate and explore the information stored. The first
of these elements is a database of PROFILES of individuals, groups and
institutions, which can be accessed through the heptagram on the home page, or
the DTN DIRECTORY on the navigation bar. The PROFILES provide thumbnail sketches
of histories, agendas and (where significant) funding sources. More than 1,500
such groups and individuals have already been delineated in the PROFILES
sections of this base. The information has been culled from public records
readily available on the Internet and other sources, whose veracity and
authenticity are easily checked. The second data element of this site
consists of a library of articles, which analyze the relationships disclosed in
the database and the issues they raise. These analyses are drawn from thousands
of articles, both scholarly and journalistic, that have been entered into the
base and linked in the TEXT columns that appear on the PROFILE pages. The
judgments that inform these analyses are subjective, reflecting informed opinion
about the matters at hand. In every case possible, their authors and sources are
identified so that users of the database can form their own judgments and
opinions about the reliability and value of the analyses.
DiscoverTheNetwork is an ambitious undertaking that would not have been possible
before the creation of the Internet with the storage capacities and data linkage
features that digital space affords and that such an undertaking requires. As a
result of the information that these technologies make available, a user of this
site can follow the networks described in the database to arrive at a new
understanding of the forces that define our social reality and shape our
collective futures.
A Guide to the Political Left --- http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/
As
we expected, the left has not taken the news presented on our site well. A
pro-Islamic jihad writer for Alex Cockburn’s
CounterPunch
regards it naturally as
“David
Horowitz’s Smear Portal” and
objects to our linking noble champions of social justice like himself with the
“resisters” in the Sunni triangle he supports. But other, less
politically deranged exponents of the leftist persuasion have also
weighed in with objections to these inclusions. This article is by way of
answering their complaints.
David Horowitz, "In Denial: The Left’s Reaction to DiscoverTheNetwork"
--- http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/Articles/In%20Denial.htm
She's
right about all ten. I've never done those.
That I've done that
you probably haven't. As seen at jo(e)'s
, profgrrrrl's, and
probably a bunch of other places, too. And, I should note, that like
profgrrrrl I found this exercise difficult because, well, most of my
"crazy" things I'm sure others have done. But not these ones! (Well,
maybe you have, but I did my best....)
- Watched the sun set over the Adriatic
Sea, a glass of wine in hand, while standing on the balcony of a
Hapsburg palace.
- After almost having a head-on
collision with a cop car, being involved in a Dukes-of-Hazzard-like
car chase that ended with the driver of the vehicle suddenly turning
off the road into a dirt driveway, turning off the car's lights, and
running (accompanied by his friend in the passenger seat) into the woods. My
friend and I were in the backseat. Stupidly crouching down hoping that the
cops would drive by. They did.
- Saw John
F. Kennedy, Jr. riding his bike in Central Park on my first visit to
New York City.
- Fell through a glass coffee table
after consuming a great deal of watermelon soaked in Everclear.
And not only didn't I need stitches, but I somehow got away without even a
scratch.
- The
Roommate Switch.
- Had a beer with Paul
Muldoon at an outdoor cafe in Italy.
- During the span of one academic
conference, acquired not one but two "conference boyfriends,"
with each never getting wise about the other.
- When eight years old, called
Judy-Garland-As-Dorothy in The
Wizard of Oz a "dick" because she got captured by the
Wicked Witch of the West, thus sparking the first and last extended
discussion of penises that I would have with my mother.
- As a senior in high school, was
named the runner up for The Journalism Education Association National High
School Journalist of the Year.
- Smoked marijuana in the "beer
garden" of a pub in Dublin, in plain sight of all, with colleagues,
knowing full well that I had to give a paper at 9 AM the next morning.
She's
right about all ten.
10
things I've done that you probably haven't:
(seen so many places, I won't bother to list them
all)
From http://thedroolfactory.com/
1. Seen someone get thrown out of a moving vehicle then hit by another.
2. Moved to Serbia and lived there for two years.
3. Gotten Brian Orser's
autograph (becuase why would you want to?)
4. Talked to my chocolate cookie dough.
5. Stuck my hand inside a running vaccuum.
6. Driven to Montreal, eaten McD's, and returned home. Whole Trip.
7. Had a snake coiled around my waist, under my shirt, and up and out my shirt
sleeves.
8. Seen THREE men 'whip it out' and pee on an OC Transpo bus.
9. Helped Alexei
Yashin pick out some tylenol.
10. Drank an entire bottle of whiskey without noticing that it wasn't the coke
I thought it was.
Ten things
Bob Jensen's done that they've never done
1.
Zoomed (drunk) out of our garage on my son's "Big Wheel" in front of a
78-year old baby sitter whom I'm supposed to be driving home. My lawyer
friend Tom
Brown, who really never drank very much, is literally standing on his head
in the front lawn with his legs pointed toward the moon. (That was
way back when when I was on the faculty at the University of Maine).
2.
Waited for an extra twenty four hours on a battleship (USS Wisconsin just
outside Norfolk) helping to search seamen's sea bags for the admiral's flag (the
two-star flag of Admiral Park) which had been replaced mysteriously in the night
by a flapping pair of panties high above our sixteen inch bombardment
guns. (That was way, way, way back when on our return from Chile.)
3.
Helped carry, along with three other midshipmen, Admiral Park into a liberty
boat so we could get him back to the ship (a long time ago in Panama when
Admiral Park partied a bit too long).
4.
Watched the smoke rising from the sides of a battleship in the locks of the
Panama Canal where the sides of the locks were only a few inches beyond each
side of the ship.
5.
Listened to rifle shots from Castro's revolution while sipping on cubalibras on
the beach at Guatama Bay.
6.
Missed the target drone every day for six days running in anti-aircraft during
firing drills in the Caribbean. (Actually this was not a rare event.
Hitting a target drone would've been a rare event in the U.S. Navy in those
days.)
7. Fed my
basset hound (Andy, the last dog of my life ) one can of dog food and later found seven piles of you know
what on our cherished Tabriz. He somehow manufactured more than eight
pounds of that stuff out of one twelve ounce can of dog food. (That was way, way
back when when I was on the faculty at Michigan State University).
8. Had
all five strands of the girth break at the same time while galloping a racing
horse. (That was back when when I was on the faculty at Florida State
University and raised a couple of saddle horses).
9. Had
the top of my Oldsmobile convertible fly off in a freak wind while I was driving
late at night alongside the San Francisco Bay (that was when I was still a
student at Stanford).
10.
Felt the wet nose of a cow on my bare back while I was parked (not quite as
naive as Johnnie Carson) with a girl friend in a pasture in Iowa late one hot
summer night. The startled cow then jerked back, caught her horns inside
the roof of the car, and ripped out the headliner. Try to picture me the
next morning "explaining" what happened to Dad's car. It was
even worse than the time I had to wake up a farmer and call Dad to come help us
in a cornfield about twenty miles from home when my old car's battery went
dead. (That was way, way, way back when I was in high school, long before
the days of cell phones)
Some more
of Bob Jensen's tales about growing up are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/max01.htm
For
earlier editions of New Bookmark
s go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Archives of Tidits: Tidbits Directory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
Jesse
H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Trinity
University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax:
210-999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu
