The Old Man and The Hawk
for Carrie

If he hadn’t been thirsty, the boy might have missed it. He saw it when he raised his canteen. It didn’t seem like much at first, he thought, just a black speck curling through the blue Utah sky. But he kept looking, curious. He squinted at the distant mystery, his thirst temporarily forgotten.

“Mr. Seth, is that a bird?”

The old man leaned against a stout but gnarled juniper, thumbs hooked in the shoulder straps of his worn canvas pack. He knew how and when to steal a few seconds’ rest as the minutes and the hours and the days and the life flowed by. He curled his arm around the juniper, letting his palm see and know the tree’s rough bark. He didn’t look up. He didn’t need to.

“It’s a hawk, son.”
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If our profits are taxed, that means we’ll have less capital to invest in new production.

— John Hofmeister, president of Shell U.S., to CNNMoney.com; May 6.

These companies are spending a very small amount of their operating cash flow on exploration. They are spending the majority of their funds buying back stock.

— Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow in energy studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, discussing results of her just-finished a two-year study looking at oil companies and how they spend their money; May 6.
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As our friend Pat so eloquently noted yesterday, graduation season is upon us. Commencements hit full stride today up the road at CU, and I suppose at hundreds of other institutions across the country, as well. So S&R would like to take a moment and congratulate the Class of 2008. If you’ve read us much at all you know that this year’s seniors are part of a generation that’s been much examined and oft-critiqued, but rest assured - if we’ve been harsh on you, our fondest hope is to be proven very, very wrong. Full Story »

I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed.

— Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights” and other bestsellers, castigating blogs on HBO’s “Costas Now”; May 1.

It’s one of the bigger Cadillacs. I’ve got a desk in it. It’s like an airplane. … I want them to feel that they are somebody and their congressman is somebody. And when they say, ‘This is nice,’ it feels good.

— Rep. Charles Rangell, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, describing the 17-foot-long, 300-horsepower, 2004 Cadillac DeVille he leases for for $777.54 a month; House rules permit members to lease any vehicle at taxpayer expense; May 1.
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It’s often difficult to get the attention of my students. But when I told them that it’s possible that a few of them would see the year 2100, and that most of their children surely would, they stopped furtively texting under their desks and began paying attention.

When I was born just after World War II, I told them, the population of the United States was about 141 million; of the world, about 2.7 billion. Now, 62 years later, Americans tip the scale at about 303 million; the world’s population has grown to about 6.6 billion.

A little extrapolation of U.S. Census data, I told them, shows the American population hitting 518 million at mid-century and 758 million in 2100. The world’s population is likely to grow to 14 billion at century’s end. Imagine what that world — their world — would be like, I challenged them.

But I was too optimistic. In a report to be released today, a Virginia Tech professor estimates that between 2100 and 2120 the population of the United States will reach one billion people.
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Since we appear to be celebrating educational idiocy lately, here’s a contribution from Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, which is currently embroiled in the hair-tearing, gut-wrenching, eyeball-poking process of adopting a new English Language Arts curriculum. Actual teachers and former teachers (not consultants, so who cares) raised concerns that the proposed reading list contained very few (4 out of 150, to be exact) books concerning Hispanic culture. The student population in Texas is approximately 49% Hispanic, which (because there are other races here, too, believe it or not) makes them… the majority. Yep.

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Administrators at West Virginia University have demonstrated, both by their actions and their words, exactly what’s wrong with higher education in the US.  In case you missed it, here’s the story. 

Heather Bresch is the chief operating officer (COO) of Pittsburgh-based Mylan, Inc.  She is also West Virginia governor Joe Manchin’s daughter.  The CEO of Mylan is a longtime contributor to Machin’s political war chest.  So far, it’s a pretty familiar story.  A child of a close friend and associate is promoted to a top executive job.

But wait!  There’s more!

Ms. Bresch published a biography claiming an MBA from West Virginia University.  As a routine check, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called WVU and, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, there was no record of Ms. Bresch’s MBA award anywhere.  Ms.  Bresch protested that she had an agreement to substitute work experience for the final 22 (out of 48) hours she needed for an MBA, and that it was a records issue.  A WVU committee found that it was, indeed, a records issue, and gave MS Bresch her MBA 10-years after she walked away from Morgantown. Full Story »

While Rep. Bruce Douglas of the state legislature makes comments that make all thinking Coloradans squirm, back here in the Old Dominion, we’re hard at work trying to create our own crowds of illiterate peasants, thanks so much for caring.

The Pittsylvania County (VA) Board of Supervisors has just voted to cut the school system budget for per pupil expenditures for the county’s school system by $686,000.

This in and of itself might not raise your eyebrows, hard hearted/hard headed pragmatists that all you readers are - we’re in tough economic times after all. But, as those classic commercials say, wait - there’s more…. Full Story »

If US News holds true to form, it will publish its 2009 undergraduate college rankings in August 2008, just in time to drill its way into the heads of all those eager new high school seniors who have to decide where to apply for early decision before November 1, and for regular decision before January 1. 

Not to mention what the rankings do for their parents’ bragging rights.

The US News rankings are controversial, especially among those colleges that aren’t highly ranked.  They complain that the magazine doesn’t measure what actually goes on in the classroom and the learning outcomes at various universities, and they’re right.  Of course, the schools themselves don’t know that stuff either.  No one knows that stuff.  I can’t even find a college that clearly defines exactly what skills and knowledge an undergrad should have before getting a degree, nor can I find one that tests to make sure their graduates have what the schools haven’t yet defined. Full Story »

By overwhelming, popular demand (and if you haven’t met Doc Slammy, you don’t know the meaning of the word “overwhelming”), here is a point-by-point translation of Lena Antman’s letter to the editor that prompted me to write the first article in this series. I know I said before that I wouldn’t do this because it would be insulting your intelligence, but rest assured: I’m not insulting your intelligence, I’m insulting Slammy’s intelligence.

Here’s my analysis. Once you’ve read it, I’ll give my take on (drum roll please) exactly why so many, many bright kids steer clear of state universities. Full Story »

In a garbage dump in Haiti, people scavenge for food.

They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.

— Saint Louis Meriska of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, whose “children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day”; food prices in Haiti have spiked 45 percent since 2006; April 18.
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The top students at my local high schools attend college at places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, and the like. They often pay exorbitant prices and take on substantial debt to go far away from home to frigid climes in dreary Eastern cities, leaving 300+ days of sunshine, mild winters, extraordinary outdoor recreational opportunities, and even a Division 1 football team behind. The local state U - the University of Colorado - woos them with honors programs and merit scholarships. There is even a full-ride scholarship in the state that many of these kids could earn, but most don’t apply. In other words, most of these kids could attend college for minimal money, but they choose not to.

Why?

Given the dearth of data supporting the idea that education at a brutally selective college leads to higher lifetime earnings (given the same level of talent) than education at your run-of-the-mill big box state U, why are so many talented 18-year-olds scrambling to get in to places that will help them begin their lives with substantially negative net worths? Full Story »

The header on the story reads this way: CU’s Campus Press Fights for Independence.

The subhead is equally on-point: A contentious faculty meeting points to independence for CU-Boulder’s student newspaper — but at what cost?

But at that point the journalism train jumps the tracks, because the first couple grafs eschew any consideration of the alleged story itself in favor of a gratuitous drive-by snarking from reporter Michael Roberts.

University of Colorado at Boulder journalism professor Michael Tracey has never previously suffered from camera shyness. Full Story »

Eric Haas and our friends over at the Rockridge Institute have a great Monday Weekly Workgroup feature that I encourage everybody to investigate. Today the subject is homeschooling, and that’s obviously one that’s going to matter to a lot of folks here. Several of us at S&R either are or were educators and it’s a topic our readers have demonstrated a good deal of concern for, as well.

Eric frames this week’s conversation nicely: Full Story »

If it was the Marlins, you wouldn’t see people in Florida getting up at 5 a.m. And if it was the Yankees — well, their fans aren’t real. They just buy the hat.

— Helio Rocha, a restaurant manager who stayed up all night in anticipation of watching the Red Sox’ Major League Baseball opener (played in Toyko) at 5:30 a.m. in famed Boston watering hole Cask ’n’ Flagon; March 26.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand has a puppeteer: the Federal Reserve. In case there is any confusion about who was pulling the strings behind the scenes of JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, the curtain was lifted Monday. By raising its bid — with the grudging approval of the Fed — to $10 a share, from $2, JPMorgan exposed what had long been whispered about but no one dared to say aloud: the Fed is officially in the deal-making business.

— from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Dealbook” column in The New York Times; March 25; emphasis added.
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It’s fair to ask whether a college kid should have to wash dishes in the dining
hall to pay his tuition when his college has a billion dollars in the bank.

— Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, “the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that oversees tax policy, [who] has written to the nation’s 135 leading universities, asking them to explain what they do with their tax-free endowments“; according to The New York Times, “Last year a record 76 American colleges passed the $1 billion mark in total endowments”; March 18.

I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race. Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.

— Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools; according to The New York Times, “… many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later”; March 20.
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Three-year-olds can be very trying, and not least because, once they find something that works for them, say, some action that made adults laugh, they’ll do it over and over and over and over expecting belly-bustin’ guffaws each time.

You’d think the venerable US News (formerly US News & World Report) would be too old for that sort of behavior, but it’s not. If the editors there can come up with some new ranking issue to “leverage the brand” they’ve built with their popular undergraduate college rankings, they’ll do it, and if they give a tinker’s dam if there is insufficient data to rank, or if their methodology is specious, they haven’t demonstrated it so far. Selling magazines is all, and the hell with those who get hurt.

Even children.

US News’ most recent foray into the ranking business, their new raison d’etre, is the November 29, 2007 issue that is their first-ever ranking of US high schools. Their website asks themselves the question: “Why rank?” They answer their own question, saying “For accountability.” Great. Let’s have our high schools be accountable for doing their jobs well. I’m all for that. But I’m absolutely against measuring things that tell us almost nothing about whether high schools are doing their jobs well and pretending those measurements tell us something useful. And that is what US News has done. Full Story »

NOTE: I reference a rather vulgar article from a recent edition of a publication whose name I have omitted, along with the author and the original name of the piece. I can’t for the life of me shut up completely about it, but at the same time I don’t intend this to be a hit piece, especially with the amazing way in which the issue was handled by the publication after the community gave its input. So, yeah, I’m using my First Amendment right, and being consarned opinionated about it, but with no malicious intent — this ark of snark may well hit an iceberg, but I won’t take anyone else down with me.

Chalk another one up to the gaytriarchy.

Once upon a time, a column in a Denver-area LGBT magazine was met with a brief but pointed shitstorm, prompting a retraction and official apology.

In case you don’t keep up with LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender — just think “gender outlaw” or “it’s those damn queers again”) media, a second-grade Douglas County boy is returning to school presenting as a girl, with the support of her parents and the school, which is going through the trouble to accommodate this change with pamphlets for interested parents and building gender-neutral restrooms…wait for it…
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Awhile back I was introduced to the concept of the “five supernatural perceptions” or “superknowledges,” achieved by bodhisattvas as a pinnacle of achievement in meditation and understanding in Buddhism. I had cause to reflect on this recently while reading George Soros’ 2006 book, “The Age of Fallibility.” If it seems odd to connect a famous financier and philanthropist with mystical powers gained through enlightenment and transcendence, don’t worry–it is odd. But there’s a common key that I found, and that is the key of flexibility in philosophy. Full Story »

These accommodations should in no way be taken as a commentary on the quality of our media coverage.

— Doug Hattaway, campaign spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton, on placing press accommodations in the men’s locker room of the Berger Activity Center in Austin, Texas; March 3.
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