Back in 1962, when I was first inhaling huge gulps of pop music, there was a song by Dr. Feelgood and the Interns that would occasionally surface on Atlanta top-40 stations. It contains these lines: You’ve got the right string, baby But the wrong yo-yo Somebody knocking on your door Well, I passed this morning…
Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert has jumped on the Far Right bandwagon that has become very crowded with those eager to denounce President Obama’s most recent “failure of leadership”: specifically, his “failure” to visit the U.S.-Mexican border while he was in Texas to discuss possible responses to the “flood” of desperate Central American children who are…
In its July 9 issue, the Albuquerque Journal-News reports that the administration at Northern New Mexico College (NNMC) is now complaining about being inundated with public-records requests. Written by T.S. Last, the article “NNMC Claims That It Is Overburdened by IPRA Requests” is available at: http://www.abqjournal.com/426873/abqnewsseeker/nnmc-claims-its-overburdened-by-ipra-requests.html. (IPRA apparently is the acronym for Inspection of Public…
Littell, Robert. The Amateur. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. A commercial and critical success that solidified Littell’s reputation as a novelist, The Amateur focuses on Charles Heller, a C.I.A. cryptologist whose fiancee is killed by West German terrorists. Intent on avenging her death, Heller tries to arrange for special targeting of the terrorists by…
An article in the Thursday, July 10, edition of The Wall Street Journal, “Who Is the Sorriest Airline?”, by Scott McCartney, provides beautiful fare for thinking once the amusement factor begins to wear off. An excerpt from a Delta Air Lines letter to one Margery Rothenberg, a passenger who complained about hitting her head while…
I did not watch the World Cup soccer game between Brazil and Germany, but I have been unable to escape the media coverage of the 7-1 “record-setting” football event, including photos on the front page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal of Brazilian flag color decorated fans in various expressions of mourning as if someone, yes,…
It seems everywhere we turn these days, we have to listen to someone or read about someone getting screwed. And it’s never a good screw, or if it is a good screw, that means the person still got shafted. Perhaps the only really good screw will be about someone actually having great consensual sex in…
The following is the text of a press release issued this morning and posted on the AAUP’s web site: For Immediate Release July 9, 2014 Contacts: Howard Bunsis, chair AAUP-CBC or Aviva F. Bowen, Director of Communications, IFT Non-tenure track faculty in Champaign-Urbana join national movement to improve university working conditions and student success CHAMPAIGN –…
Obviously this is a riff on “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and I think even many “lesser-educated” people have heard this saying. But I wonder if the “more-educated” really know where the saying comes from. According to Wikipedia, the go-to source for persons also at the college-level, the line first appeared in Edward…