Sitrep

Voting went smoothly this morning …polls very steady, but no line.

One thing I noticed at work was the eerie quiet about the election. 2 years ago there was quite a lot of hoopla on campus. This year, nobody wants to talk about it. The only electoral anything I’ve seen on campus was an ad for a shuttlebus to vote early. It would seem that a lot of young and stupid voters got educated quickly, and even the faculty (left here as always, though far less so than at a more liberal-arts-oriented school) has been quiet about their opinions.

Can we hope? The turnout picture looks beautiful so far.

Sexually healthy schools?

Church and Dwight, the makers of Trojan condoms, have teamed up with Rock the Vote to evaluate sexual health in various American universities. Various blogs have pointed out the methodological and definitional problems, that “sexual health” might better be defined as “Schools that have done the most for Trojan’s bottom line.” Of course, sexual health doesn’t equate with condom use, as there are some healthy ways of dealing with sexuality (monogamy, celibacy) where condoms are simply superfluous. Interestingly, they haven’t mentioned the involvement of a Leftist front group in the survey. Case Western isn’t even on the list… I don’t know if that’s a comment on the sexual magnetism of engineers or not. I also note the omission of other schools…Bob Jones, say, or Ave Maria…that would surely knock Idaho out of bottom place. Not that this should be about competition:

Big Ten football rivals Michigan State, Ohio State and Michigan won’t just duke-it-out on the field this fall. They competed for sexual health dominance, too, finishing 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively in this year’s report card.

“Come on, Mary, take one for the Maize and Blue.”

Kid lies his way into Harvard

A Delaware man has been charged with faking his way into Harvard and duping the Ivy League school out of $45,000 in financial aid, grants and scholarships.

Adam Wheeler, 23, of Milton, was admitted to Harvard and became a student in 2007 after he falsely claimed he had earned a perfect academic record at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and had studied for a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, prosecutors said Monday.

when actually…

Wheeler was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine from 2005-07, but was suspended for academic dishonesty, authorities said.

OK, granted, the kid is a sociopath. But he comes out of this looking better than Hahvahrd, whose hatred of Ronald Reagan must lead them to avoid “trust but verify”. It took them THREE YEARS to catch up with Wheeler. And why shouldn’t such a virtuoso liar get an Ivy League degree? Isn’t that where most of our government comes from? They ought to give him an honorary degree, for behavior befitting the ruling class.

Now there’s something worse than a Holocaust denier

…a People’s Temple whitewasher. And published by Praeger, no less.

Jones’s seductive rhetoric attacking racism, capitalism, and homophobia, which helped delude his supporters, has deluded Moore as well. In the Jonestown aftermath, the Left quickly distanced itself from Peoples Temple to save face; 30 years later, Moore highlights the Temple’s role within the American Left to revive the Temple’s reputation. If not exactly an attempt at innocence-by-association, this is at least an effort to use Jones’s associations with prominent Democrats and radicals to highlight what Moore sees as the Temple’s overlooked redeeming aspects.

Indeed, Jim Jones was a power player in Bay Area politics and thereby a player in national Democratic Party politics. Local politicians and activists benefited from the slave labor that he could provide on little notice to people political rallies and hand out campaign literature. In gratitude, Moscone appointed him chairman of San Francisco’s housing authority and Willie Brown likened Jones, a man who would eventually kill more African-Americans than any Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, to Martin Luther King, Jr.

h/t: McPhillips

“May I have a bowl with some mustache hair in it?”

The latest request for a serving from the cannibal pot comes from:

…tax policy professor John Yeutter and the St. Louis-based American Mustache Institute. The tongue-in-cheek group dubs itself “the world’s only facial hair advocacy and research organization.”

On the eve of the deadline to file income tax returns, the professor and the AMI are pushing for a $250 annual tax incentive for people with mustaches. The funds would be used for mustache grooming supplies.

Yeutter is apparently an Associate Professor of Accounting at Northeastern State (and a competitive mustache-grower), so I would hope his request is tongue-in-cheek. AMI’s proposal seems quite serious, or at least detailed.  It is probably no more ridiculous than much of what has hitherto passed for “stimulus”, but in an age where The Onion is mistaken for a public-policy journal, it’s humor we don’t need.

Mennonites cave on Star-Spangled Banner

GOSHEN, Ind. (A Pee) — For more than a century, there was no playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Goshen College — a small Christian college with ties to the Mennonite Church.

That’s about to change. For the first time in the school’s history, Goshen College will play an instrumental version of the national anthem before many campus sporting events.

They figure that since they aren’t using the words, it’s OK, and they’re following it with a prayer, and it will make the visiting team feel comfortable. But is it the job of Christians to make people feel comfortable? If comfy is good, why not join the Army with the Baptists, Catholics and everyone else?

Mennonite Church USA — which represents the largest and most mainstream group of Mennonites in the U.S. — does not specifically prohibit the anthem.

Are these guys the Anabaptist equivalent of ELCA?

Academic freedom in Mercer Co. NJ

During a February 1 political science class, Michael Glass, an associate professor at Mercer County Community College, “was conducting a discussion of what changes students would propose to the state budget to avoid the expected $2 billion shortfall,” reported Dmirty Gurvits in the college newspaper. “Some students suggested cutting the salaries of what they felt were overpayed [sic] state administrators.”
After Glass mentioneded officials who “double-dip,” the students asked for an example. He cited “several law enforcement officers, including Sheriff Larkin, who collects a Police and Fire Retirement System Pension as well as a government salary”—an $85,000 annual “retirement” pay-out, as well as a $129,634 salary.

Unfortunately, a student who was also a county employee named Pavel Morozov Brooke Seidl texted the sheriff (Isn’t texting during class against the rules? It would be in my class.)

About a half-hour before the class ended, “Sheriff Kevin C. Larkin, dressed in a trenchcoat, opened the door to Prof. Glass’s classroom,” continues Gurvits’s account. The Sheriff, accompanied by a female aide, summoned the teacher to a brief conversation outside the classroom.

When they returned to the room, the professor — with the Sheriff looming no more than “six inches from him,” according to one eyewitness — apologized for “making disparaging comments” about the stainless public servant who had barged into his class.

I agree that Prof. Glass misbehaved. He should have stood before the class, told them of Larkin’s demand for an apology, and refused to give it. It would have been a very vivid display of the true nature of the political system, particularly if Larkin tried to use force then and there.

The legal details of the double-dipping can be found here, and I must admit that I don’t understand them. If a person “retires” from an elective office, doesn’t the office become vacant? I suspect Larkin will “be retired” soon enough.

UPDATE: It looks like somebody took Larkin to the woodshed, and he apologized sorta kinda (like my granddaughter snarls “Sorry!” after she’s been bad)

Ithaca College pianos trashed

Appalling.

Probably some hippy protesting industrial 12tet music. Either that, or somebody wanting to get out of juries.

Hang ‘em high!

Hey, I’m on YouTube!

Some selections from the Brownbag Concert that Case Collegium did at Trinity Cathedral –me playing recorders with Justin Bland and Debra Nagy. Not the most flattering angle on me. The bass recorder things (2nd group) were not as bad as I remembered, though the Trinity acoustic, computer speakers, and playing away from the camera cover a multitude of sins.

Johannes Ciconia, Regina Gloriosa; and Zachara da Teramo, Credo

Henry VIII, If love now reigned; and Anon., I love unloved

(sic; pieces are actually reversed)

For those around and interested, we’ll be doing a recap of the Henry set, along with Isaac, Fevin and Mouton (with 2 extra players), at 7:30 on Dec. 4 at Harkness Chapel (CWRU campus). The Collegium singers will also recap, and there’ll be the Case Early Music Singers as well.

The Bob Marvin of the 2030s?

A novel version of “What I did on my summer vacation” — college kid with no woodworking experience builds a contrabass recorder.