A sign of the apocalypse if ever I saw one

In Groups C and F of the world cup, the teams that advanced are teams that have won no more than one game.

Spain, the supposed favorites to win, was humiliated in its first game — to Switzerland, a team that everyone was saying should have been happy just to show up.

France was not merely humiliated; its team was a disgrace.

New Zealand played better soccer than Italy. New Zealand!!!

Slovenia played great, but failed to advance.

The US played awful, but advanced. Last minute comebacks may be thrilling, but they don't always come through. (The Italians learned that today the hard way.)

The only team that has played beautifully and convincingly in every game so far is the one coached by Diego Maradona, aka the infamous "Hand of God".

If this isn't the end of civilization as we know it, I'd hate to see it.

... Read More!

A tradition that should be abandoned

George Weigel appears to have only recently noticed that university commencements have turned into screaming matches:

When did it become socially acceptable for adults to shriek like banshees when their graduate’s name is announced? …

The award of a degree ought to mark a point of passage into adulthood. Parents, siblings, and friends who understand that might want to stop acting like berserk adolescents on these occasions.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that most people's definition of adulthood is closer to what I, and probably Mr. Weigel, would term adolescence. I've grumbled about this before.

By now, it is de rigueur to endure such screaming matches. I can't remember the last time I was at a high school or university commencement that lacked screaming fans, and I've attended at least one commencement every year since 2005. I also can't remember the last time that I was at a high school or university commencement that administrators didn't plead futilely with the mob not to scream, in a sorry show of disregarding reality.

Sure, a few parents/relatives/friends/whatever might respect the request at the beginning, but that's more or less unfair to students whose family names lie near the beginning of the alphabet: sooner or later, some fools will scream their graduate's name at the top of their lungs, and then it becomes a contest to see who can scream the loudest. Administrators claim that this slows down graduation, but I've never noticed that happen: the designated reader keeps reading, and the none too weak sound system manages to make the next graduate's name audible.

In all fairness to the berserkers, whose side I am not on no matter how the rest of this reads, most graduations today are too long to sit in silence through a recitation of the name of each individual receiving a bachelor's degree. My own institution just graduated around 1,600 students, and we had to sit through every last one of those names for nearly two hours on a day that combined the wicked triumvirate that rules southern Mississippi weather: bright sun, heat, and humidity. A little bit of screaming relieves the tedium—and if a university boasts that it educates a disproportionate number of first-generation college students, then it can't complain when their families act like the child is a first-generation college graduate. In an age when churches are falling over themselves to abandon notions of dignity and reverence, why should universities, whose professorial robes are relics of clerical vestments, imagine themselves immune to the general trend? They're lucky to have anyone attend at all.

If you ask me—and even if you don't—the podium walk for any and every degree is an outdated tradition that ought to be abandoned. NC State (my PhD-granting institution) has the right idea. At least, they did in May 2005: only students receiving graduate degrees walked the podium at the main ceremony. Students earning a bachelor's degree were then asked to stand, were given a sort of general acknowledgment by the <fill in your favorite title for a university leader here: president, chancellor, etc.>—something akin to general absolution before a battle—then sat back down. Done. They walked a different podium at departmental ceremonies held across the campus, which was much more informal (at least in the math department). It was the best damn commencement I've attended in my life, not in the least because it was the shortest commencement I've attended in my life.

IMNSHO, NC State has the right idea, and all those university administrators trying to hustle thousands of graduates across a podium in a short period of time, to satisfy their nostalgia for a tradition that, in their day, likely didn't involve nearly so many students, let alone first-generation students, are just as wacked in their pointy heads as the person at my institution who thought it would be a grand idea to celebrate its centennial anniversary by have several hundred faculty sit for three hours in southern Mississippi's midday sun in heavy black robes. If you ask me—and even if you don't—that was more an attempt to resolve budget difficulties by terminating as many faculty as they could without actually firing anyone. (Pun intended.) Their plan was thwarted only by the fact that about half the faculty got up and left to take a breather in the shade—some never to return to the sun.

As you can guess, I stayed out of the shade, and got a good baking. Yes, I'm still sore, especially since the person who made the decision to bake the faculty was, in all likelihood, sitting in the shade of a canopy that protected administrators and honorable guests from the consequences of that decision.

... Read More!

Pick the conservative

Here are some quotes I've picked up over recent years. See if you can identify the quote with the author. Better yet, pick the quote that belongs to the "true conservative". For answers, click on "Read More" or look below the line.

1. A man of principle, [John McCain is] not afraid to take tough positions, and he doesn't shy away from a fight. He's not worried about what's popular or partisan or personally advantageous.
2. Although I've disagreed with David [Frum] more in the last two years than in the previous, well, eternity, he's an intelligent and important voice on the right.
3. [Should we] help more kids go to college — or … make it easier for people who didn't go to college to make a living?
4. David Frum has long been an MVP of American conservatism — and Canadian conservatism (if those words can go together)! — and, more important, he has been a sterling human being.
5. For 25 years and with utter futility (starting with "The Oil-Bust Panic," the New Republic, February 1983), I have been advocating the cure: a U.S. energy tax as a way to curtail consumption and keep the money at home.
6. I was president of the Federalist Society chapter at my law school, worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and wrote speeches for President Bush—not the “Read My Lips” Bush, the “Axis of Evil” Bush.
7. American conservatism… is increasingly becoming a pagan-influenced ideology, providing long-sought justification for evildoing and providing us the steadfastness and determination to do what we know is wrong and the boldness to call evil good.
8. The bigotry aimed at the South never ceases to amaze me. Indeed, it is astounding to me how the left tells us we need to understand the nuance of, say, the Jihadi mind in all of its shades of gray, but when it comes to the voting habits of law-abiding white North Carolinians all you need to know is that if a white hand pulls a lever for a Republican politician, that hand must be attached to a racist, and that racism guided the hand to vote for a Republican.
9. Defending Helms from the charge of racism for most of his career is impossible — … Was he always a racist? I don't know. But my guess is, yeah. He was certainly insensitive, and I don't just mean politically incorrect. Calling all black people "fred" strikes me as more than one bridge too far. … Now, as for other Helm's positions and comments, I think it is very hard indeed to defend the man.
10. The problem... is that most members of Congress don't pay attention to what's going on.

---

1. Sarah Palin, March 2010 (not 2008)
2. John J. Miller, writer for National Review, which I assert to be the the canonical conservative news magazine
3. Ramesh Ponnuru, editor of National Review
4. Jay Nordlinger, editor of National Review
5. Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist and Fox News commentator
6. David Frum, not pointing out that, in fact, he authored the phrase "Axis of Evil"
7. Joe Carter, writer for the First Thoughts weblog, which has not, to my knowledge, ever been confused for a moderate, let alone left-wing outfit
8. Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review (bet you guessed that one)
9. Jonah Goldberg (bet you didn't guess that one; he wrote it at about the same time as the previous quote)
10. John McCain

So, I have a hard time believing that conservatives all have the same opinions, and walk in lock-step to whatever dictates from the microphone.

Which is not to say that I'm one of them. I'll try to write something explaining that someday, but it isn't a priority. Now, the tournament of novels, that's a priority.

... Read More!

Actual T-shirt on a college student

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to highlight this T-shirt I saw yesterday:

Stupidity is not a crime.
Your free to go.

I can't decide if the grammatical error* is sly and subtle, or incredible and ignorant.

Call me cynical, but I'm voting the latter. I've graded too many papers, read too many essays, and made the acquaintance of too many college students who thought they were smarter than they were.

Heck, I was one, once.

---

*"Your" should be "You're", the contraction of "You are". After all, "free" is an adjective or a verb, and not a noun.

... Read More!

An open letter to the powers that be in soccer

Hi,

So soccer is a great game if you ask me, trying the players' endurance, and requiring patience, skill, and most of all teamwork. It's great to watch kids who barely know each other at the beginning of the year learn to work together.

So of course when the weather's bad, tournament officials decide to cancel games and resolve them how? With a penalty kick shootout?

Bah. A PK shootout requires no endurance, no patience, more luck than skill, and most of all no teamwork. If you doubt me, study this webpage:

Wikipedia's completely unbiased entry on penalty shootouts

About the only good thing one can say about a penalty shootout is that it's better than drawing lots.* I'd rather have players collapsing on the field from heart attacks during a 10th overtime than resolving ties or even bad-weather games with a PK shootout!!! Even if it's my son, it's one less mouth to feed!!!

The whole affair is completely antithetical to the principles of soccer, if anyone were to ask me. I know that no one asked me, but that's beside the point!

sincerely
john perry

PS: And in case you were wondering, why yes, this is sour grapes. Families drove through severe thunderstorms (some of which spawned tornadoes) so that the Mississippi state tournament could end with a miserable shootout?!? The game was decided without most kids even touching the ball! AAAAAAARGHHHH...

---

*Drawing lots was, apparently, actually used to decide the winner of a tied soccer games once upon a time. Read the Wikipedia entry for other methods.

... Read More!

The first scandal-free, lobbyist-free administration...

…oh, never mind.

... Read More!

The president-elect's pro-life halo suddenly evaporates

The president-elect didn't take long to put the lie to all those Catholics who said he'd be a pro-life president, really!

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's.*

Perhaps embryonic stem cells aren't "alive", or "fully human", and besides abortion is more serious, so Obama can still win the medal for most pro-life president, no? Uhm, no:

The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.

Less than a week after the election, more than two months before the inauguration, and one wonders whether the senator's pro-life defenders are having their doubts.

Don't get me wrong: My beef here isn't with Sen. Obama. He is merely fulfilling promises he made during the primaries, promises that were entirely consistent with his career in the Illinois and federal legislatures, even if he remained silent on them during the general campaign.** No, my beef here is with those Catholics who actively campaigned that Sen. Obama's halo would diffuse a pro-life effect into the general population. They shouldn't feel too bad; they've only known Sen. Obama a short while. The Rev. Wright knew the senator for decades: conducted the senator's marriage ceremony, inspired the title of the senator's book, and so forth. The good senator claimed one week that he could no more disown the Rev. Wright than he could disown his own family. One week later, he changed him mind on that, too. Chin up, guys! You still have four years to "hope" he'll "change".

Isn't it a shame that more pro-lifers didn't listen to the ignoble, fear-mongering McCain campaign that kept trying to divide us by pushing that right-to-life button?—Oh, wait. McCain didn't do that, just as he never fulfilled Obama's prediction that his campaign would remind everyone how Obama doesn't look like all those guys on the back of the currency. That's probably because McCain didn't have the money, right? He stuck with public funding, as per his promise, whereas the pure, sincere Obama…uhm, never mind.

Since (a) I'm still stewing over this, and (b) they're still helping me, I'll turn and bash The Washington Post some more. The Post's Ombudsperson*** has now joined the chorus of staffers admitting that Post journalists were the ones engaged in fear-mongering… against McCain.

The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement.**** The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.

Is there a Pulitzer Prize for understatement? If so, that should win one. Has anyone ever caught George Will writing even one positive word about McCain? I don't recall that Will ever endorsed Obama, but he never shied from sharing his opinion that McCain wasn't qualified even to be a Senator, let alone a President. Reading George Will is fun, don't get me wrong—but, wow.

Back to the Ombudsperson:

Obama deserved tougher scrutiny than he got, especially of… his start in Chicago and his relationship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was convicted this year of influence-peddling in Chicago.

By this point the majority of the Post's readers have quit, but those who are left are suddenly asking themselves, Who? That's how thorough the Post's coverage has been. Never mind, the man's president already. No point in running such a story now, is there? 'Twould only be "divisive".

The ombudsperson even concedes criticism that their coverage of Palin amounted to a smear job:

One gaping hole in coverage involved Joe Biden, Obama's running mate. When Gov. Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, reporters were booking the next flight to Alaska. Some readers thought The Post went over Palin with a fine-tooth comb and neglected Biden. They are right; it was a serious omission. However, I do not agree with those readers who thought The Post did only hatchet jobs on her.

(Emphasis added.) I agree with the ombudsperson: the Post did not run only hatchet jobs… They only made sure the even positive stories contained an anti-Palin spin. Did you notice that, unlike her comparison of the positive/negative stories on Obama and McCain, she doesn't provide a count of hatchet vs. non-hatchet pieces on Palin? I'd love to know that.

That's okay; unnamed "former McCain staffers" are now making sure that the press will have fodder for the next four years. Apparently certain Republicans think their man ought to be the next in line for the nomination, not this upstart hockey mom from Alaska who had the temerity to sell the govenor's plane on e*Bay.*****

---

*We'll also pretend in the article that Bush was "upending" Clinton's policy, whereas in reality—if journalists would only bother to do some research—Clinton's policy was more restrictive than Bush's. Bush, for the first time, allowed some federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. I remember how unhappy I was with the news.

**Historians will call this the Dean strategy. You read it here first!

***Ombudsperson: The Post is, for some reason, still using sexist, exclusive language. Would they call the head of a Congressional committee the chairman? Someone directing traffic a policeman? Then why call Deborah Howell an Ombudsman? Can only men ombuds? We in the Academy have overcome such things: it's chairperson, police officer, and Ombudsperson.

They could always follow the New York Times' lead and call her the Public Editor, whatever that's supposed to mean.

****Mentioning that the Post gave Sen. Obama their endorsement strikes me as disingenuous. The Post had to endorse someone, and after all those negative articles on McCain, they'd be fools not to endorse Obama. The real problem, which she omits, was that the Post's endorsement of Obama reached such heights of dishonesty that it contradicted previous page A01 news reporting and editorials. I've covered this before (footnote **** in the link), so I won't repeat it here.

*****I won't bother looking it up, but the Post tried to put a negative spin on the airplane sale, too.

... Read More!

Gripe of the day: The Weather Channel's website

Head over to The Weather Channel's hurricane tracker and ask yourself the following question:

Do hurricanes generally pass through Minnesota?

If not, why does their map start off centered in Minnesota, then waste CPU cycles and bandwidth as it scrolls to the Atlantic or Gulf Coast?

The Weather Channel's Website is, in general, a case study of terrible web design. On the rare occasion that you find the information that you're looking for, the webpage is loaded with so many useless images and even more useless Flash animations that it takes several minutes to download local weather from a dialup line. Starting up the hurricane tracker applet by centering it in Minnesota only adds insult to injury.

No offense meant to Minnesotans, of course.

... Read More!

Cyber bullying

The Ad Council has an ad against cyber bullying. You can watch one of a young girl publicly reading a list of insults about another young girl sitting in the audience. There's also an ad of a teenage girl saying some pretty vile things about a member of her study group, in front of someone's mom no less.

Each commercial moves from sketch to a scolding,

If you wouldn't say it in person,
why say it online?

Who designed this ad? Does s/he know any real-live kids? Is s/he that colossally ignorant of the fact that children say these things and worse, in person, all the time?

My classmates said stuff like that to me when I was in school, and worse besides. They said it in person, and in front of their friends. In front of some people I had previously considered my own friends, until they laughed and joined in.

My son's classmates say things like this to him now. I try to help him through this part of life the same way my mother tried to help me: teach him that people who say such things, or laugh at them, are too shallow to be worth your esteem. Develop a thick skin, and ignore it.

That's cold comfort when it seems like the world is laughing at you. I can sympathize with him. I had to contact the school faculty on one occasion: a teacher made a joke about a distinguishing facial feature, and students—"being kids"—picked up her joke and ran with it in a cruel direction. When I brought it to her attention, she had the decency to apologize to him, and put a stop to it.

I understand the campaign and support it wholeheartedly, but the choice of words puzzles me. Changing it to,

If you wouldn't say it in public,
don't say it online.

would make more sense.

... Read More!

Name a job with excellent pay and benefits!

Did you name "schoolteacher"? If so, you likely won't sympathize with the following email I just sent to a right-of-center science writer. Names and references censored to protect the guilty, but if you work hard enough you can probably find them.

Dear Mr. &mdash,

I've read a lot of your work. I've nearly finished &mdash, which is quite well written. I've ordered — for our university library, and plan to read it next. Very nice stuff!

However, I don't always follow your logic. For example, you wrote in yesterday's [weblog]: "Teaching's a pretty neat job: excellent pay, super vacations & benefits, wellnigh-total job security, union armed with thermonuclear weapons, their very own Department in the feddle gummint." And that was one of the nicer things you wrote about teachers.

Excellent pay? Super vacations and benefits?

My standard is this: "excellent" pay means that an individual could comfortably support a reasonable-sized family (say, oneself, one's spouse, 2-3 kids) on the one income. This all hinges on your choice of the word "excellent".

Reflecting on my own experience, I would not have been able to support my family of three children using only the salary I earned as a high school teacher. The benefits weren't bad, but neither were they "excellent". I've known pharmaceutical sales representatives with far, far better benefits than even the best schoolteacher: aside from the 401(k) option, the health insurance, etc., add in free gas for the most part, including for personal use; free high-speed internet at home, including for personal use; free cell phone, including for personal use;... need I go on?

Teachers, by contrast, have to buy many of the materials that they need for the classroom. I paid from my own pocket for the posters I hung in my classroom. Some twerp ruined them with spitballs.

Suppose this were any other sector of the economy. A company should not, as a first resort, import cheap, foreign labor to fill desperately-needed positions. Rather, it ought to increase salaries and benefits to make the job more attractive to qualified candidates. The same would be true if a business lacked employees in critical positions needing a special certification to do their jobs. Haven't you & others written this on [your weblog]?

An increasing number of states find themselves in this position. They cannot attract enough candidates to teach math and science. They resort to hiring uncertified teachers, often unqualified teachers, on the condition that these teachers then obtain certification. They are also importing an increasing number of immigrants to teach in areas of need. The Raleigh News and Observer reported a few years ago that North Carolina needed 11,000 new, certified teachers, but graduated 3,000 that year. In 2007, they reported that the number had grown to 4,000 new certified teachers, still far below the need. Put together baby boomer retirement, the ~50% attrition rate over 5 years for new teachers, and this shortage, and things start to look pretty bad.

I know of no state where there is a surplus of math and science teachers. Maybe there is one; I just don't know of one. Seeing as how the starting salary is quite often less than $30,000 even with an advanced degree, and that many students' parents treat teachers with at best indifference, more likely contempt, anyone who is NOT mediocre in math and science would be either a fool or a saint to take the job.

High school football coaches in my area, by contrast, can hope to make upwards of $80,000. (Hattiesburg American, June 1, 2008) Coaches can and do expel players who don't follow the rules, who misbehave, or who fail to perform. Teachers have to put up with them day in, day out.

I used to believe in the power of the free market to move prices to a point where they would reflect the needs of an economy and reflect the supply and demand equation. It strains credulity, however, to conclude that football coaches are that much more important to the economy, and in much smaller supply, than math and science teachers. It likewise strains credulity to conclude that pharmaceutical sales reps are that much more important to the economy, and in much smaller supply, than math and science teachers.

What makes more sense is that pharmaceutical reps can rely on their companies to raise prices. Football coaches can rely on their teams to attract high ticket sales. Math and science schoolteachers have to rely on the generosity and goodwill of the American taxpayer, many of whom dismiss them as already having neat jobs with "excellent" pay and benefits.

I apologize for the long email. I tried to cut the fat.

regards
john perry

... Read More!