First Looks category archive

For the second straight year, the chief executives of 36 private U.S. colleges or universities earned more than $1 million in 2010, according to an annual study by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

(snip)

“The reality is that the highest-paid presidents are often serving institutions that have great fund-raising success,” Stripling said. “It’s not uncommon to hear board members say that they’re getting an incredible return on their investment. And there’s little question that on most campuses, the president is the fund-raiser-in-chief.”

Why not just pay them commission and stop pretending they are educators?

The findings for public colleges are released in the spring.

The Booman sums up Congress’s poll ratings.

I’ve added a new link to the Old Time Radio portion of the sidebar. Check it out.

I shall be in and out for a few days.

My mother died late Thursday afternoon eight years short of a century.

She is released from the prison of Alzheimer’s.

Now we are occupied in bringing home the grandkids and great grandkids, who are scattered across the land, and giving them a chance to say farewell.

Waste no sympathy on me.

I am not grieving.

My grieving has been done, done in the years of watching and visiting the person who used to be.

She is freed

As my girlfriend said most eloquently, it was time for her soul to be free, free to find a new home.

And life goes on . . . . .

Dead one day short of 92 years old.

Family health crisis. On the road.

When I worked in Thorofare, New Jersey, I would sometimes want a change from the interstate. My alternate route would take me right by this bridge.

A freight train derailed Friday on an old railroad bridge that has had problems before, toppling two tanker cars partially into a creek and causing a leak of hazardous gas that was blamed for sickening dozens of people, authorities said.

Pictures at the link.

Spent most of the last two days editing another podcast for HPR. I’ll let you all know when it comes out. Bloggery is likely to remain light for a couple of days. Things to do.

In a study to be published January in the Journal of Sex Research, the team led by assistant professor Megan Moreno from the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that sexual references and revealing photographs posted to Facebook by 18-year-old college freshmen were not associated with the students’ sexual experience. However, the sexual content was associated with an increased likelihood of initiating sexual activity.

Details at the link.

As near as I can decipher this story, it means that horny college students talk about sex, even if they aren’t getting any, but, the more they talk about it, the more likely they are to try to get some. (In other news, water wet.)

The researchers suggest that the voyeurs who run Facebook should increase ads about safe sex to said college students, based on their posts.

Shaun Mullen remembers the late Jon Swift’s paean to Thanksgiving upon its abolishment by the liberals following the 2008 election.

I doubt that, master satirist that he was, even Jon Swift would have dared predict that Walmart would abolish it in 2012.

Off to drink liberally.

Fun and fellowship for liberals, on Tuesday instead of Thursday because of the holiday. Join us and talk about anything in a relaxed atmosphere.

When: Tuesday, November 20th, 6 p.

Where:
Croc’s 19 Street Bistro
620 19th Street
Virginia Beach, Virginia (Map)

More here.

One of the recurring strategies in the campaign to sell out off public resources is to argue that the target of the day “should be run like a business.”

This tactic is especially popular when the target is not like a business in any way and often serves as a cover for reducing the pay and benefits of the (usually relatively low-paid) persons employed in that endeavor, while increasing the pay of executives and consultants feeding at trough while the endeavor is made more “business-like.”*

Thomas Zachek skewers this strategy as it is applied to schools. A nugget:

Anti-union forces and the political right often argue that teacher compensation and evaluation should be in line with “the private sector.” What part of the private sector, exactly? A private-sector worker can be anyone from the pizza delivery guy making minimum wage to Charlie Sheen making $1.25 million per episode.

What private-sector job does teaching really correspond to? Teachers don’t do what doctors or lawyers do. Or salesmen, middle managers or roofers. Trying to educate a room full of children or teens just is not like other pursuits. (Sometimes I think a teacher’s job is most like a cross between a standup comic and a lion tamer.)

Name me five occupations in the business world that expect the level of education and preparation we expect from teachers, with similar workloads and responsibilities, for similar pay. Heck, name one.

Read the rest.

_______________________

*Overpaid CEOs and consultants at the trough are often the most “business-like” attributes of the products of the “run like a business” crew.

Love letters from World War II written by a New Jersey woman to her boyfriend in Vermont washed ashore during Superstorm Sandy.

A 14-year-old found the 57 letters inside a box walking along a beach in Atlantic Highlands the day after Sandy struck. They chronicled life for Dorothy Fallon and Lynn Farnham from 1942 until the week before they married in 1948.

If I saw a box walking along a beach, I think I would have noticed too.

When Sherlock Holmes passed away at some future date (so far as I know, he is still keeping bees in Sussex) and went to Heaven, he was immediately called into the presence of God.

“Holmes,” said God, “can you help us?”

“Why certainly,” he replied. “Please place your problem before me.”

“Well, it’s Adam and Eve. They’ve . . . disappeared. Can you find them?”

“Allow me to commence my investigation,” responded Holmes.

A few hours later (or whatever passes for hours in the celestial sphere) he reappeared with the recalcitrant couple in tow.

“What have you to say for yourselves?” thundered the Deity.

“Well,” Adam replied, “it’s all the newcomers.”

“Yes,” said Eve. “They keep asking us for autographs!”

“Hmmph!” grumped the Deity. “I can understand why you needed a break. Off with you. Now, Holmes, how did you find them?”

“Elementary, my dear God,” he replied. “They were the only ones with no navels.”

In other news, I knew the name that Holmes spoke to his friend in this episode of Elementary before it was spoken on the show.

After all, to Sherlock Holmes, she is always “the woman.”

Thomas Ricks appears on Fresh Air to discuss how being an US Army General turned into a tenured post. From the website:

Ricks is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He covered the military for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal for many years, and was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes for military coverage. His new book, The Generals, is about what he sees as a decline of American military leadership; it offers an argument about why the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been so long and so frustrating.

He says it boils down to one word: accountability. Back in World War II, successful generals were generally promoted, while unsuccessful generals were relieved of their commands. But that began to change during the Korean War.

Follow the link to read the full story or the transcript or to listen to the show.

Off to drink liberally.

It is gratifying and noteworthy that Republican attempts to gut out the vote failed mightily in Ohio and Pennsylvania (Florida, as I write this, is still up in the air, but much of Governor Rick Scott’s teabaggery was soundly rejected at the polls).