Dr. Jekyll, call your office

Spotted on the car in front of me on the way home from last night’s fireworks:

The upper sticker:  “Over-Taxed Small Business Owner.”
The lower sticker:  “Hamilton County Republicans for Obama ’08.”

(Well, there are some strange folks in Carmel.)

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One reason I never went back

Academic horror story:

About a month ago I learned that the difficulty I had in registering for Summer and Fall classes was NOT due to some unresolved debt.  I was missing a pre-requisite.  You see, I had taken freshman chemistry my freshman year.  Unfortunately, in the intervening years, the course designations have changed a bit. Chem 115 is now required for science majors, not Chem 111.  This means that I can’t sign up for ANY of the upper level Oceanography courses I need until I take freshman chemistry...a two semester class...meaning in turn that I can only take the last 3-5 upper division classes AFTER next spring.

Fudge...

How, you may ask, was I able to take these 300 level courses?  Well, this is such a subtle screw up that neither the adviser nor the computer caught it until this past semester, when the ODU registration computer finally noticed...

And it gets worse, becoming a story of “well, we changed the rules so all those credits we told you would count– won’t.”

Preliminary tally..out of 120 credits needed I now have fer sure ( in theory) a mere 50...

I have an “A” in an Asian military history class that the school hasn't offered in 15 years and is not on the class list at all....but the head of the Department insists it ought to count.

The killer comment:

If I’d just dropped out 15 years ago and gone driving full time at UPS, I’d be 5 years from retirement and in the catbird seat financially.

Grant that Ken is the quintessential nontraditional student, and 15 years is a bit long to take getting a bachelor’s.^[1]  Still, were I in his position I would be giving serious consideration lawyering up, or at least threatening it:  Juries don’t like organizations that change the rules in the middle of the game, especially when the changes screw people who have paid those organizations tens of thousands of dollars, and especially when the change leaves those people with a choice between walking away with nothing, or paying tens of thousands of dollars more.

I’d really like to get Cranky’s take on this.  (And perhaps she could also weigh in on whether academic bureaucrats are more evil than the insurance variety.)

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We had ignition...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Dear Diary... at 03:46:16 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Because “nothing says ‘pipe down’ quite like a rotten sheep carcass on fire arcing over the back fence onto their stereo.”

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Wet squib

A day of steady rain with lowering clouds as darkness approached meant no (professional) fireworks for us last night.  After waiting half-an-hour beyond the scheduled 9:47 start time, the sponsors announced^[1] they would hang it up and try again tonight.  (And no wonder: It’s hard to see fireworks shot off the top of a 36-story building when the ceiling is 500 ft!)

While dropping my date off, noted (with approval) that the neighborhood amateurs were doing their best to make up for the “silence of the pros.”


LATER:  Figures:  It’s all Tam’s fault.

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So what if “everybody’s doing it”?

Scott Rosenberg:

...Before the critiques gets too self-righteous, let’s recall that the blurring of editorial and business lines is happening everywhere.  Magazine journalism is full of it.  We will see even more of it as the business of print publishing continues to decay and publishers scramble for revenue.  The Post’s “salons” aren’t the first instance of this kind of aggressive monetization of a journalistic reputation, and they won’t be the last.

Let me know how well that argument works the next time you’re handed a speeding ticket.

Elsewhere:

Via:  Instapundit
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Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 04:47:53 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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On the fourth of July...

Hadn’t intended a posting, but had to take a moment to link this.

Read, then reflect on how “far” we’ve come.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:47:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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As Paul Harvey used to say...

I won’t spoil the punchline on this one.  Just read this, then reflect on the difference between “reporting some facts” and tying all the loose ends together.

As to the story itself...


HT:  Turk, who follows up on the follow-up.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 21:41:54 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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So far, got nuthin’. Meanwhile, have some links!

You know a post is going to be good when she begins like this:

It should come as no surprise that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has only a tenuous connection to reality, though her willingness to expose it might be.

Zing!

Go read the rest, in which Roberta X explains why you don’t define  qualifications down in the name of being “fair.”

Elsewhere, Rachel has discovered why mid-80s summer “heat” in Merrie Olde the real deal:

I would scoff when seeing headlines like this one, which is from today:  [UK Heatwave:] Britain bakes on hottest day of the year as temperatures soar to 83F

I used to read that sort of thing and think, “it’s 110° here so fuck off.”

Well. I was being a jerk.

There’s something I didn’t consider...

and finally, Joanna notes that, in the Obama presidency, “Movies explain everything.”

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Sites linked - June 2009

48 posts in June, up 1 from May, two below the ytd average of just over 50/month.  Will I do 50 in July?  Stay tuned!
 
June’s linklist will appear (below the break) shortly...

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