Solidarity for Sderot

I don't know how anyone can watch this, knowing that in the last three years 3000 rockets have landed in civilian areas, and carp about "disproportionate response."

Hamas needs to be defeated, now.

Merry New Year

I had a marvelous week with my wonderful kids and I miss them already. We were able to squeeze everyone into the condo and had way too much food. It was a great Christmas. My dad cut down one of his trees for me (he's growing trees to sell) and it turned out to be an attack tree--I've never had one with such sharp needles! Then again, it was VERY fresh. Eldest Daughter had to use leather gloves to put the ornaments on. It looks very nice in the corner and it is still gulping water down which is good. We won't take it down until after Three Kings Day.

Now it's easing back to work. Today I revised a conference paper and sent it off to my co-authors. Now I'm waiting for their responses and revisions so we can get this puppy submitted. In January I have two other conference papers to write, so I will be pretty busy.

In the "Well, what do you know about that?" category, I got nominated for a teaching award. I have a bunch of stuff to hand in for it, like a statement of teaching philosophy and evals from the past two years (hey, I happen to have those!). The competition for these things is fierce and I don't expect to get it, but it's cool to be nominated.

Youngest Daughter did very decently on her SATs and won't take them a second time. Now starts the applications and campus visits. We have one scheduled for the end of January and one in February for her top two choices. We are starting to amass things she will need as she goes off to college, and I called the condo landlady today to amend the lease. I've got it until the end of September 2009; after that, it's commute time again between HomeCity and UniTown, with some nights crashing at the parental palace. No way I can afford to pay rent AND tuition, since I am one year shy of the tuition exchange benefit. Dang. My timing is always off.

Only one more day of 2008 left. We don't really do anything for New Year's. I might invite the parents over for dinner during the day, but otherwise I plan to work on data for one of the conference papers. Saturday I get to see Alma Mater U's team in their first bowl appearance. I am so psyched!

Merry Christmas early

and birthday wishes to A and M!

Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends. Silly me, the menorah I bought in Jerusalem is defective--it only has seven branches. I have to prop the candles up, they are a tad too small for the holders.

My boy is here, having made the long journey from the South successfully (although with a fortuitous detour to UniTown instead of HomeCity). Eldest Daughter will fly in to HomeCity tonight. Then the festivities begin!

Blogging will be non-existent this week as we are all together (sort of) and I will be enjoying my kiddos.

In the meantime, read this cool article on the link between the Shuttle and Imperial Rome.

Happy Birthday to my sister!

Here's hoping for many more happy days.

Good and bad

Random stuff:

• Got a conference paper accepted (I'm third author).
• Almost done with Christmas shopping
• I'm hosting my family's Christmas at the condo. Oy, what was I thinking?? It'll be a great Christmas. Squashed, crowded, but great.
• I've got way too much to do, and it's making me scattered. Gotta focus better and plan this gift of a quarter out. It's already Week Three!!
• We are going on two campus tours this spring as Youngest Daughter gets ready to go off to real college. Fun stuff.
• I got a new work laptop. It has Matlab on it!!!
  

Jonah Goldberg on Blagojevich

This is so good--go read the rest:

For the more historically minded, it’s a time for nostalgia. The past comes alive as Chicago’s grand tradition of corruption is sustained for another generation. As the Chicago Tribune once wrote, “corruption has been as much a part of the landscape as corn, soybeans and skyscrapers.” According to the Chicago Sun-Times, as of 2006 — when Blago’s predecessor, George Ryan, was sent to prison for racketeering — 79 elected officials had been convicted of corruption in the past 30 years. Among the perps: 27 aldermen, 19 judges, 15 state legislators, three governors, two congressmen, one mayor, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a stolen pear tree. Especially in this holiday season, it’s so very important to keep traditions alive for the kids. In a sense, Blago did it for the children.

For partisans, there’s the schadenfreude that comes with watching the Democrats — self-proclaimed anti-corruption zealots in recent years — explain why Blagojevich shouldn’t be lumped in with Congressmen Charlie Rangel (cut himself sweetheart deals), William Jefferson ($90,000 in his freezer) and Tim Mahoney (tried to bribe an aide he was sleeping with not to sue him — and you thought romance was dead) as part of a new Democratic “culture of corruption” storyline.

There’s the enormous I-should-have-had-a-V8! moment as the mainstream press collectively thwacks itself in the forehead, realizing it blew it again. The New York Times — which, according to Wall Street analysts, is weeks from holding editorial-board meetings in a refrigerator box — created the journalistic equivalent of CSI-Wasilla to study every follicle and fiber in Sarah Palin’s background, all the while treating Obama’s Chicago like one of those fairy-tale lands depicted in posters that adorn little girls’ bedroom walls. See there, Suzie? That’s a Pegasus. That’s a pink unicorn. And that’s a beautiful sunflower giving birth to a fully grown Barack Obama, the greatest president ever and the only man in history to be able to pick up manure from the clean end.

I got tagged

on the "Five Things" meme.

Just in case my tagger checks up on me and publicly chides me, here they are:

Five things I was doing 10 years ago:

1. Taking care of my three wonderful, amazing, fantastic kids (hey, they are going to pick my nursing home!)
2. Finishing up my master's degree
3. Working as a consultant
4. Playing piano for church
5. Buying our first new car in eight years.

Five things on my to-do list today:

1. Read materials and rank nominees for a scholarship award (done)
2. Take Youngest Daughter to and from school
3. Go to a meeting
4. Work on research database
5. Revise lecture for Monday

Five snacks I love:
Only five??

1. Dark chocolate Pocky
2. Those chocolate-covered coconut squares Son buys me
3. Chocolate teddy grahams
4. Graham crackers and milk
5. Oreos

Five things I'd do if I was a millionaire:

1. Pay off my kids' school loans
2. Build my dream house
3. Donate a bunch to Convoy of Hope and Teen Challenge
   
4. Give all my kids money so they can come home whenever I want them to
5. Invest the rest wherever my friend Robert says I should
   

Five places I've lived:

1. The Poconos, PA
   
2. Niagara County, NY
   
3. Philadelphia, PA
   
4. Albany, NY
   
5. Erie County, NY

Five jobs I have had:

1. Consultant
   
2. Technical writer
3. Canning factory worker
4. Nurse
5. Professor

I tag Val!

The Date That Will Live In Infamy

Remember Pearl Harbor.

Photo of Battleship Row from Japanese planes: Wikipedia

SATs over and done with, and yay, AlmaMaterU!

Two nice things: First, AlmaMaterU's football team won its division championship in a really exciting game. Congrats, guys! Second, Youngest Daughter took the SAT this morning so that is finally behind us. She thinks she did decently. We find out in a few weeks.

One of my students sent me the mid-tenure recommendation letter he wrote for me. He sent it to me, with an e-mail that said he didn't believe in secrets, and if there was an opportunity for improvement we shouldn't be afraid to hear about it. I instantly got a stomachache. Then I opened the letter and read it. It was a great letter.

This whole process has been a pain. Literally. The day we come back from Christmas vacation I have to meet with the mid-tenure committee for an early morning interview. I will spend the whole time dreading that half hour. But after that, it should all be over except for waiting on the decision letter. Truly a big pain.

Two weeks until I see Son and Eldest Daughter again, for a whole week. I cannot wait. I love my job, I hope I get tenure, but there's nothing like hugging my kids close. Nothing in the world.

Okay, I will admit I am somewhat weird

but my reaction to this commercial is that a few years down the road, this birthday party would be a funny story.

Professor's kid

Youngest Daughter is taking a couple classes at the local community college while finishing up her high school work. She is a pretty good student, works hard, and takes this all very seriously. So, naturally, she gets assigned to a group with a lazy butt who never does what is asked of him on time, and what he does do is plagiarized.

She happened to find the first plagiarism before they made the mistake of handing in the materials, and the group sat down with the Lazy Butt Cheater (hereafter known as LBC) to tell him 1) they couldn't use his stuff, and 2) he needed to stop plagiarizing.

They all went off to work on the research for the group project, meeting about once a week after class to talk over their progress (of course, LBC never came to meetings, and always had some lame computer-related excuse for not having anything done). YD and another group member started compiling everything into the presentation. YD sent out an e-mail before the holiday asking everyone to get their stuff in before midnight Sunday; the assignment was due at 1 p.m. Monday. Everyone but LBC sent their materials in. He finally sent four or five pages of solid text (note that they were doing a presentation, not a paper) half an hour before YD had to leave for class. She told him it was too late, and when she met up with the other members in class they agreed that it was too late for him to submit anything.

At their after class meeting (which LBC did not attend), they was looking at what he'd sent her, and got suspicious. So they googled a sentence or two. Sure enough, he had copied from 10-11 different websites verbatim. Now they were REALLY angry, because he had put them all at risk once more of getting a zero on what amounted to 25% of their grade.

Yesterday, YD met with the professor to show him the plagiarized work and explain why LBC's name was not on the group's submission. When I picked her up afterwards, she was livid. She said the only thing she hated more than a cheater was a cheating-enabling professor. Turns out Professor Wacko (he of the jump on the desk and scream at the "racist" white kids) was trying to make excuses for LBC. "We don't know his true intention." "Maybe it is a citation problem." YD assured him that, since her mom is a professor and just HATES cheaters, she knows the difference between blatant plagiarism and citation issues. The prof said he would meet with the group at the end of class on Wednesday (today) and see if they can "help LBC paraphrase his materials."

So today he tells them that what they have is not cheating, but a "group communication problem" and then proceeds to browbeat my kid because she wants to get a good grade and doesn't want to have this kid's cheating get in the way. She's "not sympathetic" to those less smart, or "less fortunate". She's "got a superiority complex" because she's a high school student attending college. Then he tells the group they may not agree with how he's handling this issue (the other group members were backing YD up and asking how he can pass this off as a communications problem), but that *I* would not do any differently! YD unwisely piped up, "You don't know my mother--she'd give him a zero" to which he responded "Okay, so she's a hardass."

Poor kid, now the prof has extended the deadline just for this loser, and told him sweetly that he needs to write in his own words (LBC retorts, "But I cited it!"). Yeah, and some other poor slob is going to get this prize snowflake down the road, and will have to deal with this crap all over again--because the kid has learned that if he complains about being held accountable by his peers, his professor will stand up for him against those big bad students.

Wow. Just, wow. Fortunately for me, the kid is not an engineering major and I'm not likely to ever see his lying face in my classroom.

Guess who came to Thanksgiving dinner?

The Travelers went to visit Eldest Daughter in the City Too Very Far Away for the holiday. Son flew up from the Sunny South in a very cramped airplane, and we all assembled in ED's single bedroom apartment. We had brought two fold-up cots and a raggedy piece of foam to sleep on. In a welcome twist, Youngest Daughter was able to come with us, which meant the whole family was together in ED's little place for FOUR DAYS... and we did NOT kill one another!

Thanksgiving morning ED and I ventured out to Dunkin' Donuts (ubiquitous in that neck of the woods) to get some goodies to nosh on while we got dinner ready. On the way back to the apartment we were commenting that we hadn't seen any of the wild turkeys that inhabit the banks of the reservoir behind ED's building. Then we saw one, standing under the bush near the front door! I told it that we had its cousin upstairs, and it looked my way--then it started following ED to the door. She scurried inside, and held the door for me. Mr. Turkey walked over to the windows and peered in, looking this way and that.
We finally took the donuts and coffee upstairs, and told the others about the visitor. Spouse went down with some popcorn but Mr. Turkey wasn't interested. We wondered if he was following the smell of the donuts.

ED did a bang-up job with her very first turkey (unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures of it! But take my word for it, it was beautiful AND scrumptious) and a good meal was had by all. After dinner we went over to ED's boyfriend's parents' house for dessert (creme brulee, YUM) and polite conversation. It was a very nice evening.

Friday we all slept in so we got going rather late to the historical town we wanted to visit. First we stopped at an Italian deli close by and Son got some prosciutto and wild boar bacon. Then we drove to HistoryTownToo and walked around its small but picturesque downtown. The highlight of that day's journey was the kitchen supply store, where Spouse bought a four-foot wooden spoon for his sister. Too bad ED is too big for spankings anymore, that thing has a heck of a reach!

The next day we went to HistoryTownOne and had a fabulous tour of an 18th century meeting place that played a big part in our nation's history. It was a very enjoyable afternoon even if it was cold and windy.

Alas, the good times had to come to an end, and YD, Spouse, and I set off for home Sunday afternoon. It was hailing in The City Too Very Far Away, but the weather wasn't the reason for the two-hour-long traffic jam we got stuck in ten minutes after getting on the turnpike. Sigh. We hit another traffic jam near UniTown, but that wasn't nearly so bad.

Son stayed an extra day, and the poor kid's flight was delayed over an hour. So it was a marathon trip in many ways, but we had a great time together. I am sure ED loved having us there, but also loved getting her peace and quiet (and clean place) back after we were gone.

Ahhhh, break week

Last week turned out to be less break and more work than I had hoped. Two full days of grant writing seminar, then two days of getting mid-tenure stuff ready and printed (600 pages and two binders' worth of materials. I bet the committee's eyes are going to fall out reading all that stuff), then running around with Youngest Daughter for SAT prep classes, etc. etc. etc. Not much time for relaxation or anything else.

Also, Friday my PhD adviser from Alma Mater U called and wanted to know if I could teach there this spring, like I did last year. Things are much different now at my school, as it transitions to a research-intensive focus, and I didn't think the new dean would look too favorably on the idea of me teaching in two places. So I said I would ask Boss and let Adviser know on Monday (which is today).

Turns out my gut feeling was correct, and Boss said it would cause issues not just for me, but also for him if the Dean found out about this class. So I will have to decline, which makes me sad because I could use the money, but more importantly because I hate disappointing Adviser. I will admit it was stressful going back and forth between two completely different systems, though.

Today I am accompanying YD to her Holocaust Lit class to hear a survivor speak. Should be interesting. Then tomorrow I want to get the oil changed in the truck, and get it ready for the trip to see Eldest Daughter in the City Too Very Far Away, where Son will meet us and participate in the Ritual Consumption of Much Pumpkin Pie. Yay! The only bad thing is that YD cannot come with us, as she has to work. That is very sad and we will really miss her.

It hasn't been a good month

• First, the wrong person gets elected President. Notice how he is appointing all the Clinton retreads. Yeah, good luck with that "change" thing.
• My colleague who supposedly wanted to collaborate on stuff has apparently decided other things are more worthwhile. In the meantime, I had sent in an abstract based on her prior interest. Thanks a pantload.
  
• Next, I forgot about a red gel pen that was in my white shirt pocket, and threw it in the laundry. I spend Monday evening scrubbing the dryer with Soft Scrub, and soaking all my whites in bleach with the prayer that the red will come out (it did, on all but one turtleneck).
• Then, I get the semi-snarky e-mail about the non-grant (I offered to turn the money management over to the snarker, no response yet).
• I've e-mailed the mid-tenure committee chairman three times with questions about things and have never gotten even one response from him. The latest question is if I should print out all the materials for this last task, because just the student evaluation summaries are at least seven pages long. Each. For nine classes, multiple offerings. It's easily a ream of paper to print out everything. So, I ask my director, who is also on the committee. Does he respond? Nope. I guess I have to kill a forest today, then.
• And, not least but I hope LAST in this awful month, my CAREER proposal got declined. The e-mail came last night (there's ONE person who responds to e-mail!). I read the reviews and they weren't bad, except the one thing that makes me think this is a more futile effort than usual--the reviewer noted that I only had MS students identified in the proposal. Well, that's because we don't have a Ph.D. program. So then, is it not worthwhile to try for CAREER the third and last time? Sigh.

Is it May yet?

Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!

My uni is transitioning to the research-intensive mode, which means that we now have substantially higher standards to reach for tenure. We've not been given funding limits yet, but we know that's coming.

So what happens when a school flips from teaching-intensive to research-intensive? Bean counting comes first. How many pubs do I have, how many do I need, what kind do I need, can I shave off class prep time to do just one more conference paper, what grants can I go for, etc.

The next thing is the internal bickering over co-authorship and co-PI status. And therein lies today's teensy tiny rant.

One of the groups I work with needed money for a program, and someone found a funding opportunity from a local community foundation that we thought would fit what we were doing. Another woman and I ran around like little chickens with no heads filling out the forms and working with Development to get the request in on time. We were notified at the end of summer that we got the money.

This morning I got a message from another person in the group complaining that the rest of the group wasn't named as co-PIs on this thing. Well, first there IS no PI or co-PI. It's a gift, not a grant. Second, I had HER name on as the contact person, and the people in Development changed it, probably because *I* was the only one they were working with on this request. Of course she said she wasn't upset, that she didn't realize how important it is to have funded grants on one's resume. Then she says in parentheses that maybe I did! Well duh, yes I do know that. But this isn't a grant, it's a gift. The recipient isn't me, it's the university. I'm not a PI, I am the contact person which means I get to fill out the form at the end of the year saying how we spent the money. When I looked back at the e-mails that flew around over this request, there's NOTHING from her.

So, how eager do you think I am going to be to work with this group once the gift money is gone?

Ack! CAREER news (or lack thereof)

There's one other professor besides me who submitted a CAREER proposal this year. He e-mailed me Friday to tell me he'd been declined. I haven't heard a thing; I joked that they were notifying people alphabetically (his last name begins with A, mine is at the other end of the alphabet). Only 12% of CAREER applications are funded each year, and I wonder if the current economic crisis will drive that number lower at least for this year. At any rate, I am waiting for the axe to fall.

In other school news, I am DONE for this quarter! Grades go in tonight, after today's all-day seminar on getting research grants. Tomorrow, another all-day seminar on getting research grants. Then Wednesday I have to finish the last mid-tenure task, which is collating all the student evals and summarizing by class. I am almost done with that, although I have a pile of paper ones to put in order. What a pain this is!

Random stuff:

• The snowflake who sent me all those e-mails about the graphing calculator also left a voice mail on my office phone. Sigh.
• Adviser called me to ask if I would teach next semester for him. I have to ask Boss because we have instituted new conflict-of-interest rules and I don't want to get in trouble. Boss is overseas at the moment.
• Eldest Daughter is in San Francisco! She got to see Oldest Friend yesterday afternoon. Lucky.
• I bought my mom a mug with pictures from our Israel trip on it. I got one for myself and I am using it right now for a nice hot cup of tea.
• The only thing that keeps me from sniffling over missing Son is that I get to see him next Wednesday. Yay!
  

Latest snowflake

and the new term hasn't even started yet. This is an adult snowflake and I have never met or talked to this person before.

Last month's e-mail: Hey (DrMom's first name), I am enrolled in your stats class next quarter. Can you confirm the text is X? Also I talked to some other students and they said I need the TI-83 graphing calculator. Is that true?

My reply: Dear P: Yes, that is the text. No, you don't need the calculator. You do need the student version of Minitab, which is available from www.minitab.com. Signed, Dr. (DrMom's last name)

Two days ago e-mail: Hey (DrMom's first name), Do I need the graphing calculator for your stats class? Is the text X?

My reply: Dear P: Yes, that is the text. No, you don't need the calculator. You do need the student version of Minitab, which is available from www.minitab.com. Signed, Dr. (DrMom's last name)

Last night's e-mail: Hey {student's adviser's first name), please ignore my e-mail about the graphing calculator. I talked to (DrMom's first name) and she said I don't need it. I need Minitab. But I called Y at Minitab and she said the cost for Minitab is $1200 unless I can prove I'm matriculated in a degree program, then it's $495. Can you help me with the matriculation?

My reply: Dear P: Yes, that is the text. No, you don't need to pay $1200 or even $495 for Minitab. On the site it says the student version can be rented for $29.95 for six months or purchased for $99.95. Signed, Dr. (DrMom's last name)



It's going to be a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong quarter.

If you are a conservative Christian, be aware

that this may be coming to your church some day soon.

How does this make any sense?

Several outlets reported that Obama's campaign disabled the anti-fraud controls on his website, allowing questionable donations from people like "Adolfe Hitler" and foreign entities. Obama broke an earlier promise to accept only public financing for the campaign, which opened the door for unprecedented giving and documented fraud.

McCain, on the other hand, stubbornly refused private funding and stuck to his principles.

And now, this, from Brit Hume's Political Grapevine:

It is unlikely the Federal Election Commission will conduct an audit of the Obama campaign and how it raised more than $600 million. The Politico newspaper reports despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting, the record-shattering sum is seen by the FEC as minimizing the significance of any errors.

That suggests the Obama campaign was so flush with cash that if it did break FEC rules it would not have made much of a difference. The FEC would also have to vote on whether to launch the audit, and is prone to deadlock on such matters.

Meanwhile, the commission is legally obligated to carry out a rigorous audit of the McCain campaign. The senator accepted $84 million in public funding, which automatically triggers a federal review. The audit could take years and will cost millions to defend. McCain has reportedly put aside almost $9.5 million to pay for the audit.

I'm sorry, but that is nuts. Crazy. Absolutely beyond belief.

Oh, and of course now the media is self-reporting that their reports were biased against McCain, and Camille Paglia has an article in Slate admitting that maybe Ayers and Wright and the enigma that is Obama should have gotten more notice BEFORE the election. A little too late, eh?

I think we are in for a big case of buyer's remorse, and I think there's a catastrophe coming. I hope I am wrong but my gut says otherwise.

Veteran's Day 2008

Thank you, veterans, for your service to our country. We owe you more than we can ever repay. May we always remember that.

Talk about going overboard...

From Michael Graham at the Boston Herald:

Goodbye, Inauguration Day. Hello, Obama Day!

That’s the hope of some Obama supporters in Kansas who are organizing “Yes We Can” rallies to “secure a national holiday in Obama’s honor,” according to the Topeka Capitol-Journal. They also plan to serve “Obama cake” at the local McDonald’s during the swearing-in.

“Obama cake.” Goes great with Kool-Aid.

Barack Obama may be the King of Cool, but his followers are afflicted with brain fever. Fans faint at his campaign events. Harvard academics want George Bush and Dick Cheney to resign immediately. His transition team co-chair told Tom Brokaw she wants President-elect Obama ready “to take power and begin to rule day one” (emphasis added).

Folks, calm down. It’s a presidential election, not a regime change.

Viewed as part of the American story of race relations, I agree that this year’s election is a moment of great history. But as an election, it was, well, just an election.

Around 130 million voters turned out, or 61.2 percent of registered voters - 1 percent higher than 2004, but lower than in ’64 or ’68.

The Republicans lost and the Democrats won. Unusual, yes. But given the terrible economy and an incumbent Republican with poll numbers slightly above Julio Lugo’s batting average, is anyone surprised?

Meanwhile, Obama could only muster 52.6 percent of the vote, even after the Wall Street meltdown and outspending John McCain by $100 million in the last weeks of the campaign. A solid win, but hardly historic.

We’ve managed to pick 42 presidents before (43 if you count Grover Cleveland twice) without declaring any holidays before they even took office. Let’s calm down.

One of the National Review writers, who dared to criticize The One, was inundated with vituperative and hate-filled e-mails from what he describes as "Obamarrhoids" which made me laugh out loud. I am sure he got more lovely e-mails after he posted that.

Happy Birthday to the US Marines

Thank you for all you have done, and continue to do. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Oh good heavens

In the past two days, I've gotten several spam e-mails with the subject header "Cindy McCain nude in public" and "Michelle Obama nude."

Two mental images I can REALLY do without.

Spammers are the scum of the earth. We should round them all up and make them go clean pig latrines. And that's being nice.

Here's the pressing question for today...

• Will the Bills beat the Pats?
• Will I manage to keep anything down today? (Had a run-in with a rogue pork egg roll).

Wait, that's two...

Here are the two pressing questions for today.

• Will the Bills beat the Pats?
• Will I manage to keep anything down today?
• Will I take all day to write the final for my online class?

Wait, that's three...

Here are the three pressing questions for today...

THIS is what "Country First" means

and this is also what President Bush NEVER got from the Democrats:

We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD congratulate Barack Obama on his impressive victory. We pledge our support for those of his policies we can support, our willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt in cases of uncertainty, and our constructive criticism and loyal opposition where we are compelled to differ. We hope President Obama's policies and decisions will strengthen the nation he will now lead, and that our country and the cause of freedom in the world will emerge from the next four or eight years even stronger than they are today.

Read the rest

Yep

What she said.

The Statement is done

Thanks to good friends and colleagues who read it over and forced me to be less terse, it's finally finished.

One last task to go, due the 2oth. Then I wait for The Interview with the mid-tenure committee.

All this week my students have been presenting their projects, and it's been a fun time. One student was trying to explain El Nino and finally gave up. He declared that he believed El Nino was really Al Qaeda, because it sneaks up on you and causes great devastation. What a riot!

Another got into deep doo-doo when explaining the results of his study on donations; he said he was surprised that the top donors were the 60-80 year-olds, that he thought they'd be dead.

Nothing left to do but grading and finals and grading. Ahhhh. Next quarter I have only an online class to teach, which means I have lots of time for research. Yay!

Youngest Daughter is cooking right along with school and work and doing well. The driving here and there, though, is really breaking up my days. I drive her to work at 7, pick her up at 11, take her to class at 1, pick her up at 3:30, then go teach class from 6-8. I have to shoehorn meetings into the times between pickups. As soon as I get rolling on something, I have to stop and be TaxiMom. It's hard to get much done with that kind of schedule, which is why I work after I get back from class until about midnight--then the alarm goes off at 6, so she can get to work at 7. There's no other way to do it, though. And today is allergy shot day, which means as soon as her Friday class ends we drive to HomeCity and then scoot right back to UniTown for piano. My truck hit 35,000 miles yesterday.

Yeah, now they want US to make nice

For eight years, they called our President Chimpy McChimp, and Bushitler, and all sorts of other demeaning and disgusting things. They implied that 9/11 was an inside job. They treated the Vice President worse than they treated a dictator.

NOW they discover that it's better not to be spewing such hatred? NOW they realize that we can't prosper or fight off enemies if we think of each *other* as enemies?

Excuse me. I will respect the President because he is the President of my beloved country and I am called to do so both by my God and by my allegiance to the United States of America. I do not and will not respect the people who tore us down for eight years at home and abroad. I notice they did not apologize for that behavior.

http://www.zefrank.com/from52to48withlove/

Sorry. I don't believe you for a stinking second. If McCain had won, you'd be still spewing.

Not the result I hoped for

and I think we are in for a grim four years.

However.

God is still in control.

I have spent the last seven years fasting once a month for the President. It has been a joy to support him in prayer. I am not going to lie and say it will be a joy to pray for this new President; it's going to be a sacrifice. But my country is worth the sacrifice, even though it elected a man and a party to power who damn America, who have never been proud of America, who have tried to blow up America, and who think America is "mean". I hope these people come to realize the tremendous blessing this country represents while they try to govern her and keep her safe. I hope this man remembers he is President of all of us, and not just the people who agree with him.

I refuse to follow the Democrats' (and the media's--they are one and the same) example and fall prey to Obama Derangement Syndrome. Their unremitting hatred of President Bush, and the willingness to say horrible things about him and about our country, even on foreign soil (Jimmy Carter is a disgrace) hurt America immensely. They have a lot to answer for.

And speaking of President Bush, I want to thank him for his steadfast focus on keeping us safe from terrorists. He was faced with unprecedented challenges, from 9/11 to a hateful and unrelenting assault on him as a person and as a President. He faced all that scorn and bile with tremendous grace. May God bless him and his family for their service.

God bless the United States of America.

Did you vote today?

I don't know if I did. I dropped Youngest Daughter off at work at 7, then hopped on the highway. Got to HomeCity at 8:20, picked up Spouse, and we went to the polling place. Stood in line (it was out the door--maybe twice what we usually get for national elections) for 10 minutes, then they called out house numbers to cull people out of the main line into the two districts. Guess what? We have lived there 25 years, and never missed an election, and our names were not in the book. NONE OF US. Our neighbor across the street, yes. The guy next to her, yes. Us--No.

So they took us to a table and made us fill out the outside of a big envelope with all our info, including party affiliation. Sat us at a touchscreen machine turned so everyone in line could see what we were doing. The poll watcher stood behind me watching my every choice. When I was done, the ballot was printed and she looked that over very carefully, then folded it up and put it in the envelope. I took it from her, sealed it, and walked it over to the table for my district and stood there until they put it in a big leather bag. Then I stood behind Spouse to block the view of the line while he voted. His ballot did not print at all. The poll worker sealed his envelope anyway and put it in the bag. We went home and called the board of elections and the county Republican headquarters. BoE is "sorry for our inconvenience" and the guy literally ummmed about 30 times. He got really ummy when I asked if this had happened to all the Republicans in our district. He got silent when I asked if spouse's vote counted.

We've heard threats of violence in the neighborhood if Obama loses, so we had planned to put an Obama sign in our yard to forestall anything but there's no reason to do that now. They know how we voted, they all watched us do it.

Pretty sorry state of affairs but again, it's sort of typical HomeCity.

Youngest Daughter voted in her very first election in UniTown. She wanted me to come in the booth with her, aww. We always took the kids in with us, and this is the first time she was on her own in there. It was a lump-in-the-throat moment.

States trying to get money any way they can

The bad economic news has states scrambling to find "pennies from heaven" (meaning, pick the pockets of the taxpayer) any way they can.

Two cases in point:
My state sent Eldest Daughter a letter informing her that she owed hundreds of dollars in "driver responsibility program" fines from two tickets she got in 2005. She has to pay either the whole thing by November 10, or she can pay 1/3 and the state will helpfully send her a bill for the next two years. She lives in another state now, but if she doesn't pay this bill then our state will notify her state to suspend her license.

A state I lived in from September 2004 to February 2005 sent us a letter and a payment form for a business use tax, saying we hadn't paid it for the last three years. Problem is, we never had a business in that state. The only "business" we had was a consulting job I did after I moved back to HomeState. When I called the state revenue service the agent admitted they sent a ton of these letters out, and that many people who had worked as consultants or who don't live in the state any more were calling to find out why they were being dunned like this. Bottom line, we have to send in the form with a zero amount written in, or we will be audited.

Fun, wow.

That's over, thank goodness

I ended up having three members of the mid-tenure committee come in my Monday night class. They walked in, all wearing black, and sat in the corner. They stayed an HOUR! Ack.

One of my students e-mailed me afterwards and asked who "the three stiffs" were, which made me laugh.

So the next thing is the self-evaluation statement, which is due next Friday. Fun, wow.

In other news, last night was the last data mining lecture of the quarter. Just presentations left!

The unholy trio

First voter fraud. Then buying votes (that refundable tax credit to people who don't pay taxes). Now: credit card fraud.

Change we can believe in--about $100 million worth, from stolen cards, overseas donors, and outright theft. Here's the scary question being asked in the post printed below: Regarding Obama's online donation site: Who ordered the anti-fraud protections turned off?

Is this really what we want governing us for the next four years?

From nationalreviewonline:

Holding all the cards [Mark Steyn]

On the grubby little racket of his online credit card fraud, Senator Obama merely has to run out the clock now. If it's not exposed before Tuesday, no one is going to have any appetite for investigating it once he's won. So he must be relieved that this off-message headline - "Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations" - only gets as far as Page 2 of The Washington Post. (There is an element of art to these calculations: The Obamatron editors in the media want to be able to cover themselves by saying they raised the story, but the trick is to do so at a time and place that prevents it going anywhere before November 4th.) The reporter, Matthew Mosk, filed a bland and perfunctory on the subject a couple of days ago, but he seems belatedly to have woken up and got some of the key points:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.

"Largely" untraceable? "Potentially" be used? No, they have been used to evade limits. But not a bad start. Here's a glimpse of the scale of the operation:

The Obama campaign has shattered presidential fundraising records, in part by capitalizing on the ease of online giving. Of the $150 million the senator from Illinois raised in September, nearly $100 million came in over the Internet.

So two-thirds of Obama's record haul derives from a website that intentionally disabled all the default security checks that prevent basic fraud like fake addresses and no-name matches. The RNC chief counsel says:

"I think they've made the determination that whatever money they have to refund on the back end doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking all this money upfront..."

Lawyers for the Obama operation said yesterday that their "extensive back-end review" has carefully scrubbed contributions to prevent illegal money from entering the operation's war chest.

Not true. Almost every fraudulent donation sails through, and real money leaves real accounts. To give to Obama his fellow "citizens of the world" don't even have to pretend to be American. As detailed yesterday, Mr A Hitler of Berlin, Germany is only the most obvious fake donor to make a contribution and receive shortly afterwards a Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome email thanking him for joining the active community of community activists:

Dear Adolfe,

Thanks for joining this movement...

Check out the resources below — learn how you can connect with fellow supporters, organize in your neighborhood, build our national grassroots organization, and stay informed with the very latest campaign news.

(In fairness, connecting with fellow supporters, organizing in his neighborhood and building grassroots organizations is not something Herr Hitler needs a lot of help with.)

The Fuhrer is only a non-Obama supporter seeking to expose the obvious fraudulence of his online fundraising operation. If you were actively trying to funnel money to the Obama campaign for real, you'd probably choose a less obvious name to hide behind - Frau E Braun, say.

Which brings us to the case of Mary T Biskup of Manchester, Mo, who discovered there were scores of small online donations made to the Obama campaign in her name, even though she hasn't given him a dime. They added up to $174,800, which is a wee bit over the $2,300 limit. This very generous donation was not billed to her own card, but to someone else's - meaning (as the Post says) "someone appropriated her name".

Ah, but who? And, if just one unwitting front is responsible for 175 grand of the Obama take, how many other Mary T Biskups are there out there?

Here's the bottom line:

Two-thirds of the record-breaking haul Obama raised for the final stretch of the campaign comes from a racket set up to facilitate fake names, phony addresses and untraceable cards. As Bill Dyer asks:

Who ordered the anti-fraud protections turned off?

And as he concludes:

What did the wanna-be president know and when did he know it?

As Victor says below, this is part of a long pattern of behavior by Obama in which the noble ends of the Messiah's triumph justify any means.

Today is the big teaching evaluation

First there was one. Then there was two. Now there are THREE committee members coming to my class tonight.

I need chocolate.

Oh my

Watch

Read

Read

This site just cracks me up

Makes me wonder just how these people got to be so stupid and rude--and how they ever manage to get married, or find (and keep) jobs.

http://notalwaysright.com/

My sentiments exactly

The Obama Temptation [Mark R. Levin, from www.nationalreview.com]

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way. There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff. Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama. But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual. Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands. The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

The deer in the headlights moment

I am in my mid-tenure year, and undergoing the dreaded major review. That means I have several hoops to jump through, from preparing a statement on how indispensable I am to the uni, to providing samples of my publications (complete with reviewer comments). One of the hoops is a teaching evaluation.

We are almost done with our term, and time is short. Next term I am only teaching one course (!) and it's online, so there's nothing to observe. I'd asked if the committee was going to let me know when they were coming, how long they were going to stay, etc. but never got an answer. I did hear that the committee hadn't decided those things yet, and weren't meeting until the 27th anyway, so I thought I had some time.

Well, tonight the committee chair showed up in my class. I saw him come in, five minutes before the class was to start, and I just FREAKED. One of the students (an older guy who is also an adjunct here) was complaining about his midterm in another class, and I just totally tuned him out while I cleaned the board and wrote some administrivia on it. I have no idea what he was saying, only that he was unhappy about some aspect of the grading or whatever. Normally I just interrupt and tell them a worse horror story of my own to deflect any criticism of colleagues, but this time I was so oblivious to anything but sheer total anxiety that I didn't even respond to him.

There's no reason to be nervous because I have really quite decent teaching evals, but the thing was that tonight was one of the few times I was pretty much unprepared for class. I'd spent all day working with a colleague and a student getting a conference paper cut down to two pages, and I hadn't had time to do anything but print out the notes for tonight's lecture. I hadn't looked at those notes since last year.

Thankfully, he decided not to sit in on this class because there are only four students in it. He's coming to my data mining class next week, where I already have two professors sitting in so what's one more? But man, I was totally spazzed out by this whole thing. The students didn't much like it either, they were nervous for me, and the guy who was complaining about his class was worried about how that looked.

I will be so glad when this review thing is over! Which reminds me, I have to start working on my statement. That's the next task on the list.

In other news, Eldest Daughter is having fun at her trade show out in LA. She flies back to the City Too Very Far Away today. I've missed having her on the same side of the continent. Son is stressing over his exams and Youngest Daughter is still juggling classes at three schools and work. She is opening her very first checking account tomorrow!

The perpetrator of this atrocity wishes he could have done more.

and, foolishly, we are about to elect his good friend and colleague President of the United States. God help us.

Memorial recalls Brinks tragedy of 1981

Jenna Carlesso
The Journal News

CENTRAL NYACK - Paul O'Donoghue Jr. was sitting in his Nyack home on Oct. 20, 1981, when he heard what sounded like firecrackers exploding across the village.

Seconds later, sirens followed.

About a half-mile away, a spray of bullets fatally struck two officers at a roadblock near Mountainview Avenue and Route 59.

"It was a horrible day," he recalled yesterday, standing among dozens of people who returned to the crime scene to honor the officers and a fallen Brinks security guard. "They were two really good men."

It was 27 years ago that Nyack police Sgt. Edward O'Grady and Officer Waverly "Chipper" Brown were killed after the robbery of $1.6 million from an armored truck at the Nanuet Mall. Brinks security guard Peter Paige was gunned down outside the mall a half-hour before the Thruway shootings. A bevy of family, friends and Rockland County police officers gathered yesterday to remember them.

"In our lives, there are certain dates and times that present vivid memories," said Detective Sgt. Christopher Goodyear of the Clarkstown Police Department. "On this day the hand of terror thrust us into a nightmare from which we would not soon wake."

Goodyear, the memorial's keynote speaker, was one of many officers working in the area the day of the robbery. Nyack police had set up a roadblock near the Thruway entrance after the Brinks armored car was ambushed in Nanuet by a gang of former Weather Underground radicals and members of the Black Liberation Army. Paige was shot dead and guard Joseph Trombino was severely wounded.

The police stopped a U-Haul near the Thruway within a half-hour of the robbery, and six men jumped out and opened fire on the officers with high-powered automatic weapons. O'Grady and Brown were fatally wounded, and Nyack police Detective Arthur Keenan was injured.

With hands pressed to their chests, supporters recited the national anthem and hummed along to the tunes of "Amazing Grace" and "God Bless America" at yesterday's ceremony. The slain officers' friends and relatives reflected on happier times.

O'Donoghue knew at least one of the officers since he was a boy, he said. A lifelong resident of Nyack, he remembers nights when Brown and O'Grady would stop at his parents' restaurant on Main Street to make sure everyone was safe.

"They weren't just cops; they were friends," O'Donoghue said. "They would go above and beyond what their jobs required."

Former Nyack Officer John Lavelle worked for years alongside the pair. He recalls the department being very small and close-knit.

"They were natural leaders," he said of O'Grady and Brown. "Just by doing what they did, they were teachers."

The ceremony, which was held at the Brinks monument built near the Thruway entrance, mirrored the tributes of previous years. The Rockland Emerald Society Pipes & Drum Corps played "Amazing Grace," while Sheriff's Lt. Gary Bowers played taps. The Clarkstown police honor guard carried flags and gave a rifle salute.

The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal early this month to hear Judith Clark's appeal of a federal decision denying her a new trial brought some relief to the those in the crowd. Clark, a self-proclaimed revolutionary since the 1960s, was one of the people convicted in the Brinks case. She will continue to serve her term of 75 years to life for the three murders and multiple robbery counts.

O'Grady's sister, Mary Crowley, said she is stunned by the turnout each year.

"I would have thought it would have dimmed down over the years," she said. "I have heartfelt angst for everyone who comes out."

My guest lecturer didn't show

I hope he is okay and nothing bad happened. I had to scramble and do something, so I showed them this TED talk which I had planned to do on Wednesday. Oh well.

The white cat who hunts around here apparently got our chippie. The other day it got a field mouse.

My student did okay but not great. His evaluation part was weak, which I knew, and the other profs picked that apart. That's what happens when students have to rush their projects to satisfy their new employers. But he's done, and he got a B, so that's about as good as it will get.

Random stuffage

• The condo society puts out a newsletter each month, and while reading the latest edition I noticed an item that said residents were complaining to maintenance about chipmunks. We have one digging around the front door, and we can hear it now and then (so can Kitty Mama, who stares intently at the door. I pity that chippie if he should ever break through the concrete). I read the item to Youngest Daughter, who remarked: "Cutest infestation ever."
• I tried the "cake in a cup" recipe and it's good but a tad sweet for me. Next time, less sugar, more cocoa, and I need to stir it more.
• Got my second cold in a month. Sneezing, runny nose. Niiiiiiiiiiiiice.
• Week Eight is coming! Week Eight is coming!
• One of my MS students is defending tomorrow--the first one ever that my name is on as chair. I am a tad anxious. I want him to do well!
• I don't have to lecture tomorrow night. Thank God for guest lecturers.
  

Politics intrudes where it does not belong

I just picked up Youngest Daughter from her Intro to Anthropology course at a local CC. The first day of class, this professor went into a 20-minute political tirade (unsurprisingly, he is liberal).

Today, he openly advocated for Obama in a class supposedly on archaeology and physical anthropology. He made fun of McCain's supposed 8 houses and 13 cars, Joe the plumber's salary and licensure status (Why does that make any difference? The guy's "crime" was to ask Obama a question that revealed Obama's socialist agenda and for that the liberal media and netroots are tearing him apart). He said women should be terrified at the consequences of a McCain victory. Men should be concerned about their wives, daughters, etc. He equated a McCain victory to "widening the divide" between rich and poor across the globe.

Sound like archaeology and physical anthropology to you? It doesn't to me.

Professors say they don't discuss politics inappropriately and laugh at conservative concerns about bias in the classroom. They are lying. Pure and simple, it's a lie. They KNOW they advocate for one viewpoint, in positions of power, in inappropriate venues. They lie and come up with studies to disprove what we all know really happens. It's happened to me in the classroom, it's happened to my children, it's happened to my friends.

Let's tell the truth for a change. Admit the bias, and make it clear to everyone that it won't be tolerated. Or admit the bias and make it clear you don't have any intention to change. But for Pete's sake, stop lying.

This week was better, except for the money

Even though my students did so-so on their midterms, we had good post-test sessions to go over what they didn't get right. Youngest Daughter feels much better. My hockey team won their first game of the season. I handed in the first of many mid-tenure review tasks.

The second task is to make a list of all the courses I've taught over the past three years, a list of people outside my college, a list of people outside my university, and a list of students to contact. I've taught 13 different classes! That doesn't include supervising four independent studies. Wow, that is a crazy amount of course preps. No wonder I always felt like I was behind.

As for the external evaluations, I e-mailed all the people on my "outside the uni" list and they all wrote back that they would be glad to write a letter and several included very complimentary remarks which was extremely nice of them. Of the "outside the college" list I only need to hear from one more; the rest also said very very nice things. I still have to contact the students; then I can cross that task off my list.

I was worried that my time would be so taken up by these demands that I wouldn't be able to get much done this next month. The next task, the self-evaluation statement, will take a little while to write. Gathering up student evals will be a pain, as I don't know that I have them all. I tend to not read them until the following quarter (or year). It seems we are being constantly evaluated; every time I teach a class, I get evaluated. In industry, we get a formal evaluation once a year and the rest of the time we're left alone (unless we really mess something up badly). In academia, we get evaluated several times each term, plus the yearly formal evaluation. If I teach a 3-2-3 load, I am evaluated NINE TIMES in a year. That's nuts. So, no wonder this mega-evaluation called the mid-tenure review feels like such a burden.

But God is good and He will see me through it even though I may whine here now and again-- well, basically every week until it's over. Especially once the committee starts showing up to observe my classes. Yuck.

In other news, AlmaMaterU's football team is winning their game (what a pleasure to see them playing on TV!). Last night's hockey game was awesome--I could even see the skate marks on the ice.

My friend A has another job but it's substantially less money than her former job. Please pray for a better situation for her.

The retirement fund has taken quite a hit, thanks to Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and their Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/ACORN cronies. I've lost all the interest growth and then some. YD's college fund lost some also, but it's not that big anyway. Looks like instead of working until I'm 90, I'll have to go to 95. Longer, if the Dems win big this year -- my taxes will shoot right through the roof. Fun, wow.

On to Week Seven!

Just slogging along

There's not much interesting stuff going on that merits writing about. I'm just plodding on, doing all the things professors (and moms) do. Trying not to be too gloomy about the election, although I think we are in for a very rough, very miserable four years if it goes the way I think it's going to go. On the other hand, if the election goes the way *I* want it to go, I worry about the safety of my house and possessions in HomeCity--especially for the first few days after the results come in.

The voter fraud crap really makes me angry. If you can't win honestly, how can we expect you to govern honestly? Well, actually, I don't expect them to govern honestly. I expect lots of corruption and more fraud and more lies.

Sigh.

On other fronts, prayers for E. , who just lost her husband, and her family. For A., who still needs that new job. Also for Youngest Daughter, whose sinus infection isn't quite all gone yet.

Is this week over yet?

It's not been a good week. Youngest Daughter has had some bad things happen to her this week, and on top of it all has a sinus infection. I wrote down the wrong time for a key meeting. My classes did badly on their midterms. Today in my campus mail I got a fat letter from the mid-tenure committee with three pages of things I have to provide them--by November 7.

If ever I needed Oreos, it's now.

More on ACORN

Important enough to reprint in its entirety, from nationalreviewonline.com:

An ACORN Falls from the Tree
A congressional outrage.

By Ken Blackwell

As negotiations over Congress’s emergency rescue bill continued over the weekend, repeated rumors leaked out that the Democrats were trying to funnel money to a hyper-partisan organization involved in criminal voter fraud. I’m speaking of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — known by its acronym, ACORN. Although ACORN was cut from the final legislation, it’s important to understand this organization and its long history with, of all people, Barack Obama. And it’s important to see how partisan this emergency legislation has become.

As the weekend progressed, reports were constantly emerging of the sticking points preventing a final agreement. One of these reputed points of contention was whether 20 percent of the profit proceedings for asset sales in the future would go to what is called the Housing Trust Fund, subsidizing certain groups for ostensibly nonpartisan activity. One of these groups that this trust supports is ACORN.

ACORN has often been in the news since 2004. Officially, they work to register voters and support housing. In reality, everyone in public life knows that they are hardcore supporters for the Democratic Party, and employ bare-knuckle tactics. Their organization is plagued by repeated investigations of voter fraud and other crimes.

In Ohio, where as secretary of state I oversaw elections for eight years, ACORN has been busy. One ACORN man in Reynoldsburg was indicted on two felony counts of voter fraud, and another was indicted in Columbus. Other such problems surfaced in Cuyahoga County, where criminal investigations are ongoing.

It’s not just Ohio. ACORN personnel are facing criminal charges in over a dozen states. In Washington State, for example, seven ACORN leaders had felony charges filed against them for voter fraud.

And there’s an unexpected twist. One of the organizations accused of pushing banks into making many of the unwise loans at the heart of the current crisis is … ACORN. Now that’s ironic. An organization that possibly contributed to our current financial profits is now being considered to make money off of it. And by “money,” I’m referring to your tax money.

Twice already this year Congress has funneled money to ACORN. Some report that February’s economic stimulus included funds for ACORN, as did the bill to help people struggling with mortgages passed this April.

What deserves closer scrutiny is Barack Obama’s history with ACORN. Obama cites Saul Alinsky, a self-acknowledged radical who advocated extreme acts to achieve social goals, as one of his inspirations. ACORN follows the Saul Alinsky model. After Obama graduated from Harvard, he went to work for ACORN in Chicago. Mr. Obama then became a trainer for ACORN, teaching others how to employ ACORN tactics in voter registration drives.

This ACORN involvement coincides with the increasing partisanship of this situation.

Congressional Democrats, and specifically Mr. Obama, are now saying that the problem underlying all this is “deregulation,” pushed by the Republicans. There are two fundamental flaws with this allegation.

First, this is not deregulation. This is not the private sector. Fannie and Freddie are government creations, that pay their executives millions of dollars but are shielded with your tax money from suffering the downside risk of the market. Engage in racetrack-style financing, they must be strictly controlled. Deregulation is about keeping government from hobbling the private sector and hamstringing its ingenuity and productivity. Deregulation does not apply.

Second, Republicans have tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Republican attempts to reform them in 1999 failed. In 2003, when Alan Greenspan testified about how Fannie and Freddie’s loose practices could endanger our financial system, it was Democrat Barney Frank who said these institutions were fundamentally sound, and should be more aggressive in getting loans to low-income people. In 2005, a Republican reform passed the Senate Banking Committee on a party-line vote, only to be blocked by Democrats from passing the full Senate. And in 2006 when John McCain spoke on the Senate floor of the need to reform Fannie and Freddie immediately, Democrats (including Barack Obama) would not respond.

You can also see where Fannie and Freddie look for protection by where they direct their money. Public records show that the top two recipients of Fannie/Freddie campaign contributions are Sens. Chris Dodd and Barack Obama, taking $165,000 and $126,000, respectively. Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, and Mr. Obama, who says he’s going to remedy the whole situation.


It suddenly seems so clear why Democrats want ACORN to get some of the taxpayers’ money. I have unapologetically criticized Republicans, some by name, for out-of-control spending, lack of accountability, and other inexcusable actions that have tarnished the GOP and disserved the nation. And there are other issues that are either both parties’ fault, or no one’s fault.

But here, the Democrats are squarely to blame. They have resisted all attempts at reforming Fannie and Freddie, and pushed those organizations to become ever more reckless in their policies. This made the investments on Wall Street carrying those tainted mortgages go from bad to worse, and now we’re in a crisis and on the verge of a meltdown.

This is inexcusable. And if independent voters figure this out, their outrage over this situation will suddenly be directed against the party that pushed these disastrous policies. So Democrats want ACORN to get as much funding as possible, because they might need some new votes in their column on Election Day.

Voter fraud is in one sense the worst crime against democracy. The sole means of democratically choosing leaders is through voting. Every voter gets an equal vote. Every citizen who is a law-abiding adult has an equal voice in who will govern us. Our vote is sacred. Those engaging in voter fraud are in one sense no different than who intimidated voters at the polls in years past. Voter fraud may not be attended by the suffering that accompanied the beatings and water hoses of those days, but the assault on democracy is no less real.

ACORN is a discredited organization, and far too many of its leaders and workers have been prosecuted for felonies against democracy. The idea that a single dime of taxpayer money would ever go to such a group is an outrage.

And Mr. Obama needs to explain his involvement with them.

— Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, is a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union. He has also served as an undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Two things

First and foremost, my friend A has just found out that her job is gone after Friday. She works for a major American automaker, and they are in trouble. A is one of the reasons I will never ever buy a non-American automobile. We have lost too much of our manufacturing capability to Japan and China. I don't want us to lose this too.

Please remember A in your prayers, that she will find a new, better, and more stable job quickly. In HomeCity, that's a tall order but God can provide.

Second, I watched this yesterday. I don't begrudge any American their Constitutional right to express their opinions. I am sure the same thing happens to the opposition (I would hope not; I would hope we are better than that, but I also know human nature). But that one question at the end, after seeing the ferocity of the reactions, struck me. Indeed, how far is it from the open hand to the middle finger?

However, if you look back over history, politics has been contentious from the start. This polarization is nothing new. I think it feels worse because we've removed a lot of safeguards from society. We've become more rude, more coarse, more confrontational in everyday small things.

R.I.P. Paul Newman

Great actor, great philanthropist, great man.

Read a fine obituary here

I have survived Week Four

Missives from the provost and dean are coming nearly every day. All of them involve tenure. It's getting very annoying.

The rumors that were flying last week are partly true and partly not. No, we don't have to submit reviews from publications. Yes, we have to have someone external to the Uni review our tenure packets. The last e-mail from the provost laid out a long list of requirements for the tenure review, from examining syllabi and graded exams to ranking outlets for publications. We are assured that ranking isn't going to take place yet, but already the provost tried to make a blanket statement that conference papers won't count. Deans from fields where the conferences are more selective than journals protested, and the provost backed off.

More worrisome is the new dean's failure to fight for people currently up for tenure who don't fit the new paradigm of Ph.D. holder with a research background. So, this new policy, which we were told wouldn't apply to anyone past the mid-tenure review, is indeed applying to those who went up this year. It's nuts. Those past mid-tenure who don't have the required publication numbers have to scramble in the next three years to get papers out. With the long publication cycle of paper journals, these people don't have time to go the traditional route. They are being advised to submit to online journals, who have a shorter review time. BUT--online journals are not highly regarded, and too many online journal papers will get a negative review from an external person. It's a vicious circle.

Another annoyance is tuition exchange. I'm in my fourth year at this school. At five years, my daughter would get free tuition (currently, she gets 75% free). She is heading to college full time next year, and I won't be at the five year mark yet. If she goes to a school in our tuition exchange program, we will have to pay the full weight for her first year. Argh.

I've checked my TIAA-CREF account to see if the banking situation has impacted my tiny retirement fund any. I saw some loss in the stocks section but gains in other areas. I've got an aggressive plan, because I have to make up for 13 years of stay-at-home-mom pay, so I was worried that I'd go backwards with my fund. Right now I have enough in there to last, oh, one year. Then it's eating cat food, lol, because my Social Security fund is just as tiny as my TIAA-CREF amount.

Oh well. I can't think about all that stuff now. I have two or three sets of homework assignments to grade, and three midterms to write. I've got a paper I want to get out by the end of October. My condo bedroom is messy and I need to organize it better. Youngest Daughter needs new jeans and is contemplating making them herself, which means I get to make them because she doesn't know how to sew yet. So it's time to stop worrying and get to work.

I just have to say

This ACORN stuff really makes me angry.

Comfort food and football; random stuff

Still sick. Still sneezing loud enough to scare the cats, still runny-nosed, and now coughing. Fun, wow.

So, I made myself some Cream of Wheat with toast and sat down to watch my Team. Ahhhh. At this point, we are behind 3-0 but the game is young.

Yesterday's game didn't turn out so well, Alma Mater U's poor football team got creamed. They hung in there for quite a while, though, before the opposing team just steamrolled them.

I made African sweet potato stew in my slow cooker yesterday and it was very very yummy. Today I started a batch of chili so Youngest Daughter has a choice of food for dinners and I have something hot to take for lunch/dinner at work. I've got a nice pot roast I'll pop in the oven after the football game and that will be yet another choice for us this week.

When I went to stir the chili, I noticed a funny kind of plastic-cooking smell (amazing I could smell at all, let alone pick out that scent from the general chili-aroma). I think the countertop is cooking. I put a tempered-glass cutting board under the slow cooker and now I don't notice the smell. Yikes! Yesterday I had that slow cooker on high for four hours, right in that exact spot. I guess I'd better keep it off the counter from now on.

Sadness, I am almost out of Russian Caravan tea, my mainstay for when I have a cold. Time to order some more. I think I have enough for one more pot.

I hate being sick

Stupid runny nose. Stupid sneezing. Stupid swollen glands. And, I have no chicken soup and I am out of Puffs Plus.

Anyway.

Alma Mater U's football team, which went Division 1 a few years ago, has had an exciting season so far. Last week's game was a nail-biter with a fabulous ending (for us, not for the opposing team). I am looking forward to listening to them play this afternoon (no TV coverage, too bad).

I've decided I have to take at least one day off every week from academic stuff or I will just be completely unable to come up with viable research ideas. My brain needs a rest! So, I've taken up an old hobby and am working on a number of special presents. They are not going to be finished quickly, as I haven't got tons of time to work on them, but I'm enjoying myself immensely. So, while I'm listening to AMU's game on the Internet, I can work on Best Friend's present.

The big news is really big, size-wise. Spouse bought me a 46" high-def LCD television for the condo, replacing my little 13" Sharp. It comes Thursday. Dad is going to condo-sit until it gets here, as I have two back-to-back MS defenses to attend. Football and hockey are going to be FANTASTIC on that thing. Wow. Can't wait!

I have survived Week Three

Sorta kinda.

I have a scratchy, sore throat and my nose is all stuffed up and I just want to nap. I managed to get through classes this week but I am bailing on today's committee meeting because I just feel crappy.

Of course, I still have to get some blood work done, pick up Youngest Daughter from work, drop her off at school, pick her up from school, drop her off at piano, and pick her up from piano. Maybe, somewhere in there, get her to the DMV to take her learner's permit exam and the Board of Elections to register her to vote (GO SARAH).

Sigh. Maybe tomorrow afternoon I can vegetate.

Two of my MS students defended successfully yesterday. Both were given job offers by Lehman Bros. but are now having to re-open their job search. I feel badly for them and I hope they find something else soon.

I am hearing more rumblings from faculty on the scholarship issue. I think it's going to be a tough year for many people who are now scrambling to find something to do for research. The dean wants an increase in undergrad research, which is going to be difficult to comply with--at least in my department, where we have no dedicated majors. The only undergrads I teach are sophomore level and the classes don't lend themselves to research at all. It's going to be very very interesting.

I work at a nutsy place

There are a lot of things about my uni that are--well, odd. I come from state schools, and this is a private university so I would expect some things to be done differently. I don't know that I can explain it adequately, but it's just strange practices that seem more suited to a company than a university.

Take parking. At Alma Mater U, we have visitor lots, student lots, and faculty lots. Students register their cars and get a hang tag for no extra fee. They can park in any student lot on campus, and in any faculty or visitor lot after 3 p.m. Faculty buy a parking pass (hang tag) for a minimal amount of money, and are allowed to park at any lot on campus. At PrivateUni, students and faculty can park in any general parking area (portions of each lot) without having to buy a hang tag. Anyone, faculty or student, can pay about $150 a year for a pass to park in reserved spots in ONE particular lot. So, since my office building is at one end of the campus, and I teach in a building at the other end of the campus, I have to choose between walking the length of the campus at the beginning of the day, walking the length of the campus at the end of the day, or walking half the length of the campus any time I have to go to or from my truck. It's not that I'm opposed to walking, that's good for me. But I'm opposed to anything that makes it harder or more inconvenient to do my job--which often requires me to leave campus during the day for meetings and things, or to teach in the evening in a building far from my office.

But wait! We not only have a hang tag, we also have a garish orange window sticker that we have to put on our left rear window. We have to replace the thing every year when we re-register the vehicle and buy the optional reserved pass. So last night, after a 14 hour day, I walked to my truck after 8 p.m. to find a parking ticket under my windshield wiper (you knew this rant had to be motivated by something like that). My offense? Not having the updated ugly orange sticker defacing my truck. Now, mind you, I was parked in a reserved section with a valid hang tag, which means I had to register the truck before I could buy the hang tag. Registering automatically generates the orange sticker. So I had the orange sticker, I'd just forgotten to scrape the old one off and put the new one on. But the truck was obviously a registered vehicle.

Argh. Now I have to go fix that before I get another parking ticket. What a pain. Anyway, it's typical of some of the practices at PrivateUni, and they are just weird.

Week Three

Okay, I survived Week Two. Found out that I'm not teaching two courses I'd planned on, one in winter and one in spring, but that's okay. It means I won't have an evening class next quarter and that's GREAT news because I hate evening classes.

We had a day-long faculty retreat last week to discuss the new dean's initiatives. We were the first department he'd talked to, and I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at the other department meetings. It seems we are morphing into a research-intensive institution overnight and that will cause no end of problems for the many professors without PhDs. 'Twill be an interesting year, that is for sure.

On the home front, Kitty Mama and Kitty Son went to the vet Saturday for their checkups. Both are fine, but Kitty Mama needs her teeth cleaned. Son weighs 12.5 lbs, one pound more than his mom, and only slightly more than last year. They both got shots and Kitty Mama's claws were trimmed. I had found what I thought was a mutant claw but apparently it was a keratin deposit and it wasn't there anymore.

Kitty Son had some blood drawn, and he had a little red bandage tied around his leg at the site, which he worried and gnawed at until he pulled the gauze out and we had to remove the bandage. He was not a happy kitty until he realized we'd bought donuts. Kitty Son LOVES donuts, and we hardly ever get them so he was aggressively begging for pieces. Well, he got some from me, and some from Spouse, and some from me....and he ended up with diarrhea. No more donuts for Kitty Son!

9/11/2001: Never forget

all previous photos AP






from www.michellemalkin.com:

Are you ready for some

FOOTBALL?!!

Where would you rather be than right here, right now?

Go Bills!

The first snowflake of the year!

The first homework assignment for one of my grad classes is due next Wednesday. I announced the assignment in Wednesday night's class, and explained what I wanted them to do. They have to find three data mining research articles where the authors used real (not simulated) data.

Just now I got an e-mail from one of the students asking "How can I fined [sic] journal articles about data mining efforts or is there a web page?"

Aw. This poor graduate student has obviously never had the chance to visit a library. Why, I've got a tear in my eye. Or is that a snowflake?

ALMOST done with Week One

One more day of teaching, a meeting tomorrow, and then Week One is in the can. It's been a long week. I have two professors sitting in my M-W class, and that makes me a tad nervous but there's nothing I can do about it. It's also good practice, because this is my mid-tenure year and I will have someone from my college's tenure review committee watching me at some point anyway. Ack.

I'm trying to get something together for an NSF grant application that is due October 1st. So far we have the ghost of an idea. I know I can write a grant app in an afternoon; it's getting a good idea that is the hard part. Lots of deadlines this month, so I need to get cracking early every day to get some quality work done.

No snowflake stuff yet, although I did get an e-mail last week from one of last spring's cheaters. He wanted a appointment. I said he was welcome to come to office hours, UNLESS he wanted to ask for a regrade. That, I told him, is not open for discussion. I've not heard from him since. This one's excuse for cheating was that he was getting married and he was too excited with the wedding preparations to notice what he was doing. That's certainly an unusual excuse.

Youngest Daughter is taking a couple courses at the local community college, and she had an interesting first day. One professor is a raving lunatic liberal who actually told the kids if they were white they needed to "get over themselves" and that they were all racist. He got up on the desk and jumped up and down multiple times, ranting about how *everyone* was oppressed and had no possibilities because of the evil white Christian male. Since he is a white male himself (although, I'm guessing, not a Christian one), I wonder why he doesn't give up his tenured position to some poor oppressed female or minority, and go live in a van down by the river.

The second class wasn't much better, with one particularly clueless and strident student making over-the-top comparisons of the lives of homosexuals in this country to the Holocaust. Okay, you look at photos of hundreds of dead Jews shoved into a mass grave, so starved and grotesque in death that they don't even look like they were human, and you compare the lives of Americans to that? What, we don't allow homosexuals to work or own property, strip them naked, throw them in concentration camps, kill them by gas and gun and starvation, incinerate their bodies, and have a national policy aimed at eradicating them from the face of the earth? That comparison isn't just a tad overblown?

So where was the professor in this? Doing nothing. Certainly not asking critical questions about the claims some students were making ("This sort of thing is happening right here in America!" Where would that be, exactly? Done by whom to whom?). I guess one's opinions and beliefs get challenged only if they *aren't* left-wing and/or off-the-wall radical. Such as, oh, say--conservative, or Christian, or observant Jew.

And yet I read all the time in Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education that this kind of stuff just does not happen in academia, that conservatives' complaints about what goes on in the classroom are groundless, or at least stuff like this is very rare. Sorry, my experience, my spouse's experience, my children's experience, and that of my conservative Christian friends belies that claim. YD's account of her classes yesterday are just the latest pieces of corroborating evidence.

Poor YD. She has to put up with these idiots three days a week for the next 14 weeks, in an election year (by the way, GO SARAH!). I know what that feels like. Been there, had to do that. You can bet I will encourage her to write about the evil white male's abusive ranting on his evaluation, at the very least.