Fortunately, the Audio Cassettes Were OK
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Boosting Male Attendance at Universities
Professor Reynolds overlooks the obvious when he comments on the disparity between males and females in universities:
I like to walk around campus on nice days, and sometimes I take pictures. When I post them on my blog, people always comment on the number of women in them. But, in fact, that’s a pretty accurate reflection of what college campuses look like these days. (Fellow photoblogging professor Ann Althouse has noticed the same thing.)
Reynolds quotes an article from USA Today which posits 138 women for every 100 men in college. Reynold speculates about the causes and possible solutions to the disparity, but he overlooks the “Jan and Dean” solution.
Universities can move more towards an equitable distribution of genders by promoting:
1.38 Girls for Every Boy
That would certainly increase male enrollment.
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Book Report: The Columnist by Jeffrey Frank (2001)
I bought this book from the 80% off book store last autumn and found that it had migrated to the second rank of my to-read bookshelves, which means I buy too many books over the course of the year.
This book might have been written too early; it serves as the fictional memoir that tracks the rise of a William Safire/George Will syndicated newspaper columnist from his humble beginnings at a college newspaper in the late 1950s to the stagnation of his career and life in the 1980s. As it was written before the rise of the blogosphere, one can only speculate about how it would have played out if all the cool bloggers had read it.
I enjoyed the book, although not without qualification. Brandon Sladder is an oblivious user of people, obnoxious and socially climbing. He crosses women, he backstabs his employees, he alienates his “friends” and describes them in his memoir as too busy to confab with him. But we can laugh at his obliviousness and wonder if perhaps he does know but is putting a good face on it.
But as the book turns the final corner into the finish line, we discover that both of his wives have cheated on Sladder, who’s a clod but cloddishness doesn’t excuse adultery except to certain elements from amoral cosmpolitan areas. The final sex scandal, tacked on, seems too much, and the downfall of Brandon Sladder seems abrupt. Of course, given the voice of the book, it would have to be abrupt and inexplicable, but it shouldn’t actually seem that way to readers of the novel.
And although Brandon Sladder, at the end, almost achieves self-awareness, he does not, and Jeffrey Frank does not yield any sort of redemption. So at the end, Brandon Sladder is as self-absorbed and oblivious as at the beginning of the book. Ultimately, that strips the book of its humor, as all along we weren’t laughing with a character recounting his past flaws, but laughing at a lesser person. The end completely changes the tenor of all that came before it and ultimately made the book completely disappoint me.
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Hopefully, the Gods of Irony Are Sleeping
A European Space Agency mission, named Don Quijote, might practice deflecting asteroids.
Geez, does anyone else think that the result of the mission might be akin to a break in billiards, where a bunch of things go flying off in all directions, making previously not dangerous Near Earth Objects into killers?
I mean, they did name it Don Quijote, for crying out loud. Also, they have an aging population which weighs upon their economies that cries out for a radical solution.
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Generation X Moves to China Grove
Holiday Inn Unrolls Gen X Welcome Mat:
“It has lots of glass and is very open. We’re collaborating with a feng shui expert,” Snyder said. “Gen X is very into looking toward the east.”
Cancel our reservations for the Hilton, honey, its layout will anger ancient Chinese spirits and besides, you know how the temprapedic mattresses malign my chakras.
I’d weep for my generation if I weren’t a part of it and close enough to know Snyder’s kookier than we are.
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Because Taxes Are A Slush Fund
State set to roll out tire-cleanup fee:
Lack of money temporarily let the air out of Missouri’s program to find and clean up tire piles.
But that should change soon. For the first time since January 2004, retailers will collect a 50-cent fee on each new tire sold in the state, starting Oct. 1. The money will support the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ waste-tire cleanup and enforcement program.
Missouri lawmakers renewed the program this year when they passed a larger hazardous waste bill. Senate Bill 225 also created a 50-cent fee on the sale of car and truck batteries, to address broader hazardous waste efforts. That fee, which also goes into effect Oct. 1, covers batteries containing lead and sulfuric acid that are six volts or more.
Will they cut our taxes by an equal amount? Will they quit collecting the fee after they’ve cleaned up all old tires in the state?
How naive do they think we are?
They don’t care so long as we continue to have spare change in our pockets and we continue to hand it over.
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Early Sign of Libertarianism, Sci-Fi Geekdom, or Both
Son of a gun, you know, all this time Mr. Mister wasn’t advising us to carry a laser down the road that we must travel.
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QA Wins One
Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software:
Jim Allchin, a senior Microsoft Corp. executive, walked into Bill Gates’s office here one day in July last year to deliver a bombshell about the next generation of Microsoft Windows.
“It’s not going to work,” Mr. Allchin says he told the Microsoft chairman. The new version, code-named Longhorn, was so complex its writers would never be able to make it run properly.
The news got even worse: Longhorn was irredeemable because Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.
Mr. Gates resisted at first, pushing for Mr. Allchin’s group to take more time until everything worked. Over the next few months, Mr. Allchin and his deputies would also face protests from programmers who complained he was trying to impose bureaucracy and rob Microsoft of its creativity.
Forget the bug jail; I want a bug dungeon, somewhere deep and dank to send naughty developers.
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BS Detector Alarum Klaxons
What’s wrong with this story:Road-rage bullet hits tip of a raised finger:
About 12:40 a.m., the 25-year-old man was waiting at 500 South for the light to change so he could get on the freeway, said South Salt Lake Police Capt. Chris Snyder.
As he waited, a woman in what turned out to be a stolen car pulled up next to him.
The two made eye contact, but there was something about the contact that made the man uncomfortable, Snyder said. The light turned green and the two cars entered the freeway.
On the onramp, the man told police, the woman began to drive aggressively and sped up to pass the man. In doing so, she hit some traffic cones that gradually closed some of the southbound lanes, Snyder said.
Somewhere between 2100 South and 3300 South, the woman rolled down the window of her car and yelled at the man.
So he made an obscene hand gesture.
That’s when she apparently fired four shots at the driver’s side of the man’s car. One of the bullets hit the tip of the man’s middle finger on his right hand, severing it. His index finger also was injured, but not as seriously.
That bullet lodged in the man’s windshield.
The man tried to follow the woman, Snyder said, but lost her and so he went to seek medical help. He called for help near 6900 South and was taken to Cottonwood Hospital where he was treated and released.
So this woman whom the victim has never seen before yells obscenities at him, follows him, and shoots at him four times with a .357, managing only to hit the tip of his finger, after which he immediately pursues the crazy woman who just shot him until he loses her?
Why do I suspect any actual investigation will uncover more to this story?
Road rage? I think not.
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Local Government Pleased To Lose More Of Its Employment Base
Owen at Boots and Sabers covers the story of a yeast manufacturing plant’s closing in Milwaukee’s formerly industrial Menomonie Valley. The closure will cause the loss of 80 jobs, but the headline of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel focuses its headline on a by product of manufacturing: Aromatic era may be wafting away for good.
Yes, industry does tend toward the unsightly and to the unscently, but it tends to employ people at more than minimum or service level wages, union or not. But the powers that are commissioned (often not elected) see the loss of industry as an unfettered win:
Red Star’s possible closing is sad, but it opens up another potential redevelopment site, said Laura Bray, executive director of Menomonee Valley Partners Inc., a non-profit group that leads redevelopment efforts in the valley.
Another development site for entertainment venues, like an expanded Indian casino and a Harley Davidson museum. These entertainment-style things, often called the signs of a big-league city by people who want more of them, don’t pay as well as manufacturing jobs and don’t build the community infrastructure and draw families to live in cities; instead, they draw infrequent visitors from the suburbs, divert tourist dollars from other venues within the city, and give the ultra-urban types–who want to think of their cities as big-league more than merely “home.”
(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Sunday Drive.)
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Public Service Announcement
Although it fulfills the requirements, namely:
- It rhymes.
- It refers to a cute animal.
- It also refers to a sweet ice cream flavor.
- It ends, twice, with the long e sound.
Chunky Monkey is a very bad choice for a pet name for your wife.
Because if I didn’t warn you, gentle but unthinking sometimes male reader, you, too, might try it, to poor results.
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Book Report: A Season to Be Wary by Rod Serling (1967, 1968)
I inherited this book, whuch collects three novellas from Rod Serling, whom we among the wise ancients remember as the man behind the Twilight Zone, from my aunt. I read it rapidly, as its writing is thicker than R.L. Stine; because the writing is richer, it engages the reader more and pulled me along better than a series of simple declarative sentences and frags that presented numerous opportunities for me to insert my own thoughts (mostly damn, this Stine book sux) into the narrative. But I disliked that book so badly, I’m ripping on it here and am failing to give Serling’s book a fair hearing.
The book includes three novellas, as I mentioned, and all are of the Twilight Zone fantasy genre. In the first, a former Nazi officer hiding in Argentina desperately dodges Israeli agents and deals with his own aging and possible madness. In the second, a racial rabble rouser in 1960s Mississippi makes his living, livelihood, and gets his chicks by fanning the flames of racial hatred and inciting riots. In the third, a wealthy blind woman finds someone willing to sacrifice his eyes to give her 12 hours of sight.
In retrospect, none of the main characters of the stories represent true protagonists, as each is relatively subevil in their own way. However, Serling presents them in such a fashion that we can sometimes feel the emotions they do and almost sympathize with them that way, and we’re certainly interested in what happens to them. The third story, “Eyes”, represents the weakest of the three, though, and really doesn’t make one connect to any of the characters, but one still wants to know how the events turned out.
So I enjoyed and appreciated the book. I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s probably the best book ever dedicated to Sammy Davis, Jr.
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They Do The Jobs Americans Won’t
Hiker stumbles onto pot farm in national forest:
It began when a hiker in the Prescott National Forest stumbled across some interesting-looking plants Wednesday and notified authorities.
It ended on Thursday, after a stakeout, with the arrest of a Mexican national from Los Angeles charged with marijuana production.
That’s indeed code. For:
Rodriguez-Martinez and the others were believed to be illegal immigrants, Jarrell said.
Look who’s blurring the distinction between the Mexican nationals from Los Angeles and illegal immigrants. It’s not the opponents of illegal immigration.
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Joseph Kittinger, Jr., Award Winner Brad Satchell
We at MfBJN hereby confer the Joseph Kittinger, Jr., Award upon Brad Satchell:
An Australian surfer survived a shark attack by repeatedly punching a small shark he first thought was a seal, the second incident of its kind this month, local radio reported on Saturday.
Brad Satchell, 44, was surfing about 120 meters (390 feet) offshore at the popular Scarborough beach in Perth, capital of Western Australia state, on Friday when he was attacked.
“I actually had a smile on my face when I first saw the thing because I thought it was a seal,” Satchell told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
He said he turned his surfboard on its side to use as a shield when the shark, which he said may may have been a bronze whaler more than a meter in length, began to attack him. He was unhurt and paddled to safety.
“I lifted my body out of the water and I just got my fists and I remember what I’d read in the paper. I just started punching and I connected with its head,” Satchell said.
Gall as big as church bells.
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Book Report: Killing Raven by Margaret Coel (2003)
I inherited this book from my aunt; I don’t know if she read it, but I do know she bought it from a yard sale for fifty cents. Perhaps she enjoyed it, or perhaps she merely was hoping to sell it for more on eBay after I suckered her into the used book racket. The book’s worth what she paid for it, but not what I gave up to get this book, but that goes without saying.
It’s the second book I’ve read in the last two months dealing with Indian reservations in the southwest (Cyber Way was the first), and it’s the best. It’s a murder mystery set on an Arapaho reservation. A man’s body is found near the local necking spot, and the investigators have to determine whether its related to the new reservation casino. Did one of the aggressive protestors pull the trigger? Or an organized crime figure?
An important aspect to the book is the dynamic between the main characters: a mission priest and the independent Arapaho lawyer with whom he shares a strong attraction upon which neither of them can act. As they go about their investigation through separate paths, the book handles their multiple points of view and their unrequited love very well.
Unlike some of the other series books I’ve read of late, I think I’d like to read more of this author and her series. The locale is exotic enough and the characters are real enough to merit further attention. Even a couple of bucks.
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Realization/Admission
Ladies and gentlemen, I realized today with some sadness that I don’t have any right to publish posts like this one, nor to dub upstanding pillars (and soon to be a flying buttress) of the community “Keith Tkachubbs” because I have never laced up the skates, put on the pads and helmet, and taken a stick out to “do battle” on a sheet of ice.
As such, I have no authority to proffer my opinions nor to suggest nor speculate on how a team should perform.
I am a chickenhock, and I apologize.
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The Autumn Collection
Models show ‘massive devastation’ in Houston.
Thanks, but I don’t care what Texan designers have cooked up to sell clothes this year.
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Police Seek To Compound Tragedy with Arrests
Boy, 4, lived in filth — and died:
When Ethan Patrick Williams fell off his bicycle in July, no one would have called the cuts and scrapes on his legs serious injuries. Four weeks later the boy, 4, died from an infection. Police say the boy had been living in filthy conditions, and they believe that squalor might have played a role in his death.
Because the police think that the squalor might have played a role, they did the only sensible thing: broke up a grieving family:
Ethan’s mother, Emily A. Altom, 25, and his stepfather, Michael D. Altom, 25, were charged Tuesday with voluntary manslaughter and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. They were released Wednesday from the Perry County Jail on $15,000 bonds.
But let’s get to the squalor:
In a sworn affidavit, Cpl. Jason D. Kelley of the Perry County Sheriff’s Department described the Altoms’ trailer as unfit for any human dwelling. He described walls and carpeting as soiled and stained and said the floor and kitchen counters were piled high with clothes, broken toys, empty beer cans and rotting food.
He said there “was not enough sleeping space for three children, and no crib for the youngest child.” Kelley said the entire trailer reeked of “a foul offensive odor.”
Friends, that sounds like the Noggle household to a critical eye. As for no sleeping space for the children, am I to assume they never slept then?
I always get a little queasy with stories about child abuse and neglect, particularly as they play out in the papers and in the affadavits. I realize that I Don’t Have Children and Therefore I Cannot Understand (the Sheehanist religion), but building laws to defend the Children which depend upon arbitrary interpretations and impressions of public officials whose livelihoods depend upon prosecution seems like a couple of skips into tyranny. But of course, I don’t have children, so I look at this like a rational man and not a parent.
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Great Moments in Keynesian Economic Theory
Five accused of stealing Missouri tax credits:
Five people were indicted this morning on federal fraud and money-laundering charges for what prosecutors called a $10 million scheme to steal state tax credits.
This could have been avoided if the state only adhered to a policy of taxing businesses equitably, regardless of how the state thinks the businesses benefit either the state or the state’s whims.
But that would deprive the state of its twofer: giveaways to its favorites and the ability to get tough on the crime its giveaways encourage.
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We Got Plans
N. Korea Accuses U.S. of Plotting Attack:
In a second day of bluster after its disarmament accord, North Korea accused the United States on Wednesday of planning a nuclear attack and warned it could retaliate.
Let’s make it clear, rest of the world: We have plans to nuke everyone, from North Korea to China to France to Great Britain to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Are we clear on that? Because we understand the nature of man and their collective nature, we are ready to destroy anyone who could attack us, no matter how probable our nuclear plans are to be used.
Because planning is easy, and being unprepared is bad.
So don’t think you’re special, North Korea, even though you’re highest on our list of probable recipients of an unwelcome transfer of nuclear technology. We have plans for every contingency, I hope.
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