Author: Brian J. Noggle

As the Marquette Mascot thing continues (see The American Mind and Marquette Warrior for updates), I cannot help feel the deja-vu with the current process offered by the Marquette administration. It’s like 1993 all over again.

Students (and now alumni) can offer suggestions, and the administration will choose the most innocuous and, oddly enough, lamest suggestions for a vote. No Warrior allowed. Then the students (and now alumni) will vote for the least stupid alternative. Granted, it’s a learning experience for students who will have to face that sort of decision every election, but.

In the end, no one will be happy, but the administration will have its overly-conscious arrears covered.

So, sullenly, I’ll add my suggestions, although it’s certain never to turn up on the ballot even as students in 1994 never got to vote on the Marquette Fighting Octopi. Friends, fellow alumni, and gentle readers who could give less damn, here’s a name I’m certain even the university president would love:

Marquette Wild

Hey, it worked for Minnesota.

Over at Draft Matt Blunt 2008, I dared to commend Matt Blunt for cutting the state’s outlays for library information technology infrastructure.

At the University of Texas – Austin, they’ve gone the other way; they’ve removed all books from the library to turn it into an Internet cafe:

Students attending the University of Texas at Austin will find something missing from the undergraduate library this fall.

Books.

By mid-July, the university says, almost all of the library’s 90,000 volumes will be dispersed to other university collections to clear space for a 24-hour electronic information commons, a fast-spreading phenomenon that is transforming research and study on campuses around the country.

“In this information-seeking America, I can’t think of anyone who would elect to build a books-only library,” said Fred Heath, vice provost of the University of Texas Libraries in Austin.

Their new version is to include “software suites” – modules with computers where students can work collaboratively at all hours – an expanded center for writing instruction, and a center for computer training, technical assistance and repair.

Libraries are moving from the repositories of information model to an entrance ramp to the information superhighway. As household Internet penetration continues to climb, libraries will make themselves as relevant as public television viewing points. But they get more budget and they get to convince themselves that even though they’re librarians, they’re not bookish.

Unfortunately, by moving to a service provider business model, so to speak, libraries marry themselves to continual, increasing costs of business. Whereas the library could alter the number of books to accommodate different fiscal realities, buying fewer in years with less revenue or more in periods when the government is flush, the move to the public Internet cafe means that costs will always escalate as the libraries need the latest technologies.

In Milwaukee, libraries are finding a cash crunch even though their budgets have gone up. Unfortunately, expenses are going up faster:

Spending by public libraries in the Milwaukee area increased by 12% from 2000 through 2003, and more than half of the area’s libraries raised operating expenditures by more than double the rate of inflation, a new analysis shows.

The spending increases come as municipal governments – the primary source of library funding – are under growing pressure to hold down costs and taxes. But an unusual state law governing the funding of libraries makes it nearly impossible for local officials to make significant cuts in library budgets.

“It is a bone of contention, especially in an environment where the Legislature is talking about things like tax levy freezes and spending limits,” said Curt Witynski, assistant director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, which has sought to have the law repealed.

This is the future of libraries in America; they’re changing their model from performing a valuable service to the public (which most of the public, tragically, doesn’t use) to offering an expensive service that most of the public will have in their own homes. Libraries are decreasing their relevance to become “hipper” and “sexier,” but it ultimately will look as hip and sexy as 1920s swimwear.

Both Neil Steinberg and Richard Roeper have weighed in on the new ordnance, whoops, sorry, ordnance is against the law in Illinois, ordinance banning use of cell phones while driving.

Roeper calls the ordinance “impossible to enforce:”

Last Thursday I was in a cab crossing Michigan Avenue. There was a temporary backup because of a truck backing into a garage just east of Michigan, and we found ourselves right next to a traffic cop. She could clearly see that my guy was gabbing away on his hands-free phone, but she didn’t say a word to him about it. So I spoke up — and he reluctantly hung up, just as he was sailing past the address I had given him in the first place.

If cops don’t care about the thousands of cabbies using hands-free phones, are they really going to direct their energies toward finding motorists using hand-held phones? Are they going to position themselves at the city limits, just waiting for an unsuspecting motorist to cross 87th Street while still on the phone?

My dear Mr. Roeper, it’s not impossible to enforce, but it would take a lot of effort to enforce the new ordinance, taking law enforcement resource committments from more important things. Chicago cops won’t enforce this ordinance every time they encounter an infraction, but they will enforce the ordinance when they want to. That is, when they want to stop you for something or take a look in your car, they’ll simply pull you over for talking on the cell phone.

Legislation in the twenty-first century doesn’t address major crimes against people and property; rape, murder, and assault have been illegal for centuries. Instead, our elected leaders have to search for new things to criminalize. They’ve got all day to think it up since that’s their full time jobs: to examine new technologies and brainstorm about how to criminalize and/or tax it.

Picture this text scrolling up the screen before Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith:

Lucas, speaking to reporters, emphasised that the original “Star Wars” was written at the end of the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon was U.S. president, but that the issue being explored was still very much alive today.

“The issue was, how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship?” he said.

“When I wrote it, Iraq (the U.S.-led war) didn’t exist… but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable.”

He acknowledged an uncomfortable feeling that the United States was in danger of losing its democratic ideals, like in the movie.

“I didn’t think it was going to get this close. I hope this doesn’t come true in our country.”

Story in St. Louis Post-Dispatch: FCC commissioners warn of effort to consolidate media:

Two members of the Federal Communication Commission called upon the public Saturday to help their agency resist new efforts to relax rules allowing big corporations to own more television and radio stations.

Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the commission members, spoke before an overflow crowd to the National Conference for Media Reform at the Millennium Hotel in downtown St. Louis. More than 2,200 people from across the country are attending the three-day conference.

The federal agency voted to relax its rules on media consolidation two years ago, but Congress and the courts intervened to stop it.

Copps said the three Republican members of the commission, a majority, are ready to try again. He expects big media companies to bring “a lot of pressure” on the commission to allow more consolidation of newspapers and radio and television stations.

With the explosion of new media types such as blogging, podcasting, satellite radio, and coming media forms that are directly consumer-interactive such as streaming movies and Internet video, I think the major media companies will fight for a diminishing share of consumers.

However, certain segments of the FCC want to ensure that it retains the ability to regulate businesses as much as possible. Because as the audience fractures and the broadcast media become less relevant, so too the functionaries and appointees who regulate it. Unless the demonstrate some vision and leadership to intrude upon other, non-airwave media, too.

The latest journalist to revise Bush’s rationale for the Iraq War as only Weapons of Mass Destruction: Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune:

With American dissatisfaction over the conflict in Iraq reaching its highest level since the invasion two years ago–and the initial reasons for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein undermined by the discovery that he possessed no weapons of mass destruction–Bush has set out this year with carefully scripted tours of the recently liberated nations of Europe to cast all of these events as chapters of one great world saga.

But the peaceful, homegrown movements of these nations bear little resemblance to what Bush has dubbed “Purple Revolution” of Iraq–named for ink-stains on the fingers of Iraqis who voted in January for a new government.

Critics contend that the president is masking the original, and later discredited, reasons for invading Iraq with his vow to end world tyranny, a theme Bush voiced in his second-term inaugural address and has repeated across Europe.

Like Sylvester Brown, Jr., before him, Mark Silva and his unnamed critics don’t remember this reason as existing prior to the war. They also seem eager to determine that the Iraq War and its democratic aftermath are unrelated to these peaceful revolutions.

Mere coincidence, perhaps, explains why these things are happening now in the age of straightforward, ultimatums-upheld foreign policy instead of in the economically-supercharged and multilateralist-triumphant 1990s where treaties were signed and discussions were held and the status quo remained.

Shrieking headline: Animals in abandoned pet shop are discovered in squalid conditions.

Lead:

The Department of Agriculture is caring for 206 animals living at the Pampered Pets store in Alton Square mall while the shop’s ownership is resolved in court.

Management at Alton Square mall learned this week just how messy a business breakdown can be when pets are the merchandise.

Matthew and Jessica Buckingham, the owners of the Pampered Pets store on the mall’s second floor, defaulted on a loan and abandoned the store, said Jeff Squibb, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Agriculture. The agency regulates such businesses.

My dog, man! How long were those animals living in abandoned squalor?

When the store did not open for business on Thursday, mall officials notified Alton authorities.

“We arrived and found horrible conditions,” said James Greer, Alton assistant chief of animal control. “When animals are unattended like that, even for a short time, things get filthy fast.”

It sounds like the officials were confronted with the same amount of mess that pet store employees confront every morning, and the facts in the story imply that Thursday was the first day the store hadn’t opened. The story, on the other hand, uses the appropriate words to imply the opposite.

Story:

Two men each received two life sentences plus 512 years in prison on Friday for robbing a grocery store in St. Charles.

Wow. If Martin Luther had gotten that sentence for his 95 theses, he’d be eligible for release in 2128. Of course, in today’s prosecution environment, he’d have gotten a separate count of something for each thesis.

It’s good to see perspective and reasonability involved in sentencing. After all, with improvements in medical science, it’s important that we as a society sentence offenders to half a milennium in prison.

Just what we want in relationship of mobs of people to leaders: mass hysteria:

“Everyone was screaming and jumping up and down. It was mass hysteria,” claims a graduate of a women’s liberal arts college in Decatur, GA, site of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s commencement day address this weekend.

Will they do anything for their leader? Because that’s the other sign of a too-successful Great Leader.

Professor Bainbridge points to an article that might indicate that the ruling class has almost succeeded in erasing history to its benefit:

Who will be the Greatest American? Political giant Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton? Sports legend Babe Ruth or Tiger Woods? Media mogul Oprah Winfrey or Walt Disney? These remarkable people, and many more, have been named by America as some of the top 100 Greatest Americans.

The common man gets to vote for the greatest American from these choices:

Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Hamilton
Amelia Earhart
Andrew Carnegie
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Audie Murphy
Babe Ruth
Barack Obama
Barbara Bush
Benjamin Franklin
Bill Clinton
Bill Cosby (William Henry Cosby, Jr.)
Bill Gates
Billy Graham
Bob Hope
Brett Favre
Carl Sagan
Cesar Chavez
Charles Lindbergh
Christopher Reeve
Chuck Yeager
Clint Eastwood
Colin Powell
Condoleezza Rice
Donald Trump
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eleanor Roosevelt (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt)
Ellen DeGeneres
Elvis Presley
Frank Sinatra
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Frederick Douglass
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Lucas
George Patton
George Washington
George Washington Carver
Harriet Ross Tubman
Harry Truman
Helen Keller
Henry Ford
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Howard Hughes
Hugh Hefner
Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jesse Owens
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Stewart
John Edwards
John Glenn
John F. Kennedy
John Wayne
Johnny Carson (John William Carson)
Jonas Edward Salk
Joseph Smith Jr.
Katharine Hepburn
Lance Armstrong
Laura Bush
Lucille Ball
Lyndon B. Johnson
Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone)
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little)
Marilyn Monroe
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
Martha Stewart
Martin Luther King Jr.
Maya Angelou
Mel Gibson
Michael Jackson
Michael Jordan
Michael Moore
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.)
Neil Alden Armstrong
Nikola Tesla
Oprah Winfrey
Pat Tillman
Dr. Phil McGraw
Ray Charles
Richard Nixon
Robert Kennedy
Ronald Reagan
Rosa Parks
Rudolph W. Giuliani
Rush Limbaugh
Sam Walton
Steve Jobs
Steven Spielberg
Susan B. Anthony
Theodore Roosevelt
Thomas Edison
Thomas Jefferson
Tiger Woods
Tom Cruise
Tom Hanks
Walt Disney
Wrights Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright)

Excellent! The blurring of historical achievement and current celebrity. Once the process of completely eliminating a sense of history from citizens occurs, the greatest Americans will narrow to contemporary celebrities and political figures. Wirhout a perspective on history, who will we be to challenge the thoughts and views of the Greatest Americans as they tell us what to do and think?

My, aren’t I dystopian in the morning?

In a move undoubtedly designed to stimulate the economy, the White House has determined that you should pay more for your clothes:

The Bush administration is re-imposing quotas on three categories of clothing imports from China, responding to complaints from domestic producers that a surge of Chinese imports was threatening thousands of U.S. jobs.

The administration action will impose limits on the amount of cotton trousers, cotton knit shirts and underwear that China can ship to this country. American retailers say that will drive up prices for U.S. consumers.

Higher prices and diminished sales always benefit consumers, retailers, and the economy. Or so this administration thinks when it starts slapping around the tariffs. Perhaps the Bush administration can only replicate the success of Smoot-Hawley in the twenty-first century.

Once again, Christopher “Pork” Bond promises to fight fiscal responsibility if it, you know, impacts his voters:

U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., said during a news conference outside the base gate Friday that he was “stunned” by the recommendation [to split up the area’s 131st Fighter Wing at Lambert Field, to relocate the Army Human Resources Command from Overland, and to move the Defense Finance and Accounting Service as part of BRAC] and promised to fight it.

“It has very clear homeland security implications that must be considered and, I do not believe, have been adequately considered by the Pentagon,” Bond said.

Because, you know, the Pentagon has overlooked homeland security and military considerations which a senator, whose job involves bloviating on all sorts of unfocused topics, sees immediately. The important homeland security functions provided by the Human Resources Command, you see, which only possible Bond voters can provide adequately.

Perhaps Bond means his homeland job security implications, which puts him in the chorus of local democrats (William Clay, Charles Dooley, and Francis Slay). Excellent company you’re keeping, Senator. Those of us who value fiscal conservatism in our federal legislators have taken note.