Author: Brian J. Noggle

From the Post-Dispatch story entitled UM ends suit with $10m scholarship fund:

The University of Missouri has agreed to set aside $10 million for a scholarship fund to settle a class action lawsuit that the school violated state law for 15 years by charging tuition to in-state, undergraduate students.

That’s the University of Missouri system, right? Check it out:

Between 1986 when the University’s Board of Curators broke a 1939 law by charging educational fees based on credit hours until 2001 when the legislature repealed the 72-year-old statute, Mizzou was breaking the law at its campuses in Columbia, Rolla, St. Louis and Kansas City, Herman alleged and Romines ruled in December 2002. Since then, higher courts upheld the ruling.

Somewhere in that run-on sentence, the author says Mizzou was breaking the law at the four University of Missouri campuses listed. The problem? Mizzou refers specifically to University of Missouri at Columbia. That’s a specific nickname that the author applies to all UM campuses.

Word: don’t use the hip local lingo if you’re unclear on it.

In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story entitled Amtrak train hits tractor-trailer, we have an inadvertent argument in favor of ending Amtrak subsidies:

Six people on the westbound train, which had a total of 23 passengers and crew on its engine and three passenger cars, were taken to Barnes-Jewish Hospital with bumps and bruises, said Kim Bacon, a spokeswoman for EMS. [Emphasis added.]

23 passengers and crew scattered among 3 passenger cars in a train that’s just left the St. Louis station bound for Kirkwood, Washington, Jefferson City, and Kansas City. Maybe the majority of its passengers get on at Kirkwood. Or maybe our goverments are spending millions of dollars to move dozens of people each day. But in a scenic fashion with historical ties, so that’s a bargain!

(Attempted submission, again, for the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

Headline on CNN: Groups suing FBI over monitoring of activities:

Five civil rights, animal rights and environmental groups are joining together to sue the FBI to release records about monitoring of anti-war and other political activities by federal agents assigned to counterterrorism duties.

The FBI might monitor political groups under the trumped-up “counterterrorism” excuse. Wait a minute, which groups are suing?

The American Civil Liberties Union said the decision to file a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington came after the FBI ignored Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents. The other organizations involved are the American-Arab Anti-discrimination Committee, Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and United for Peace and Justice.

So we’ve got Arab groups, animal rights groups, and environmental groups. Groups that might be connected to rogue organizations that actually commit terrorist acts on American soil? Sounds like the groups the FBI should monitor in the name of counterterrorism.

We’re not talking about the Boy Scouts of America, the Society of Technical Communications, or the United Auto Workers. And if a group called Prepared Youth of America or Tech Writers for Justice started setting fires to motels or IT companies that have crappy documentation, I wouldn’t mind the FBI sniffing around them.

Tasers: or else the cops would have to shoot you for not getting out of your car:

The two-mile pursuit ended on west 56th Street, but Martin refused to get out of the car. One deputy broke out a window and used a taser on him.

Cops wouldn’t shoot the driver in the case, nor would they clap him with the billy club. Because those leave marks that look bad in photographs. Tasers, though, are nice alternatives to deadly force.

02-P-381 Appeals Court: JOHN DOE[1] vs. MARY MOE.[2]:

Early in the morning of September 24, 1994, they were engaged in consensual sexual intercourse. The plaintiff was lying on his back while the defendant was on top of him. The defendant’s body was secured in this position by the interlocking of her legs and the plaintiff’s legs. At some point, the defendant unilaterally….

I forgot from whence I found that particular link, but I have to wonder who will be the first to demand that court cases like this be redacted from the public record to protect the impressionable minds of children.

UPDATE: I was remiss in not pointing out that I saw this story on Overlawyered.

Your topic, today, gentle reader: Causes for Alarm.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails:

Reznor said he began to grow worried about finances when he was told during a meeting with Malm and a lawyer in 2002 that there was “cause for alarm.”

The following year, he said, he asked Malm to tell him how much money he had. He said he was sent a financial statement that revealed he had at most $3 million in total assets and as little as $400,000 in cash.

Crew on the International Space Station:

A balky Russian oxygen generator broke down on the International Space Station, but its two-man crew has a reserve air supply that would last about five months, NASA officials said Friday.

The station’s primary generator, which has been operating in an on-again, off-again fashion for months, stopped working last week and the station’s crew has not been able to fix it.

Mission managers say the unit has failed for good. Consequently, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and U.S. astronaut John Phillips will be relying on reserves until replacement parts arrive at the station in late August.

Kylie Clem, a spokeswoman for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said the reserves would last well beyond the scheduled mid-June arrival at the station of a Russian space freighter with additional supplies.

As it stands, oxygen supplies in a Progress cargo carrier now at the outpost will last until May 22 or May 23.

The crew also is equipped with oxygen generators that work like drop-down emergency air supplies on commercial airliners. Supplies from those would last until early July. Beyond that, there is a 100-day oxygen supply in tanks attached to the station U.S. Quest airlock.

Total air supply now onboard: About 140 days.

One of these situations is dire, and the other is not. Can you spot the difference?

From a story about how forfeiture laws are providing a windfall for small towns, we have this admission:

A police officer, aided by a drug-sniffing German shepherd named Bella, parks his cruiser on the side of the expressway three or four days a week, looking for any vehicle that seems suspicious — a broken taillight, an expired license plate or simply a car that changes lanes excessively.

That is all it takes to pull over someone who might be a drug courier. If the officer is lucky, he confiscates not only drugs but bundles of money.

Keep this in mind when your state legislature wants to add primary offenses such as seatbelt laws or cellphone use laws that allow police to pull you over for smaller and smaller reasons: they’re making it easier for the police to use you as a lottery ticket.

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.