Social

The Dallas Morning News recently published an editorial by Thomas Hibbs entitled “ College Kids Get Brain, No Soul. In the editorial, Hibbs references the exceedingly disturbing article in Rolling Stone called “ Sex & Scandal at Duke. The Rolling Stone article discusses the social scene at Duke where “work hard, play hard has always been a motto. According to the article, in recent years, the “work hard portion has morphed into an obsessive desire to please faculty, working to produce high quality papers which will be accepted by professors in order to get good grades, graduate with honors and get a good job. The “play hard portion of the motto has turned into an obsession with alcohol and casual sex, bleeding back into “working hard to maintain the perfect body, social connections, etc. ...

In reference to my previous comments on the plagiarism scandal in the school of engineering at Ohio Universtity, yesterday the university announced a set of “ comprehensive strategies to address academic honesty. Among the steps being taken is to examine 55 theses for signs of plagiarism. From these, they have found 35 incidents that will require a hearing. Punishments handed out could include the revocation of the former student’s degree. Furthermore, the two professors whom have been implicated have been relieved of their advising duties. ...

There’s nothing I love more than a good book, unless it’s a free good book. Last week I was sent “The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah. I’ve been sent free books based on my job before (either as a research professor or as security officer), but I’ve never been sent a book on the ethics of the pharmacutical industry before. It took me a bit to figure out, then I realized that I’m presenting at a Human Subjects conference. I’m sure they sent the book to all of the presenters. ...

I’ve heard and read a number of people saying “political correctness be damned, we should use racial profiling to identify terrorists. The problem I’ve always had with this is that it makes no sense. Try the following test, identify the terrorist: young muslim male young muslim female asian male or female caucasian male or female black male or female hispanic male or female If you said that 1 and 2 have been terrorists and therefore we should profile them, you are partially right. However, what about all of the asian terrorists (e.g. Fillipinos)? Caucasians? Hmm, the IRA, David Koresh, Timmothy McVeigh, etc. As near as I can guess, the only racial groups that shouldn’t be profiled would be blacks and hispanics. This can’t work. ...

Hmm, someone should go check the “ rapture index, I’m about to link to an article at Cato Unbound – the Cato Institute’s Blog. Richard Rodriguez write’s a beautiful article regarding Mexican Immigrants, their coming to America and what the clash of cultures means to second and third generation Mexican-American immigrants. The response article by Victor Davis Hanson, restores my belief in the general silliness of the Cato Institute. For example, Hanson notes: Only six out of ten second-generation Mexican Americans on average graduate from high school in four years; and less than ten percent have a BA degree—the legacy not of racism or America’s “cold heart,?? but of millions arriving from Mexico without English, education, and legality. ...

Some days, I just can’t write about work frustrations. Not that I don’t want to or that I don’t think they’re interesting, just that it’s part and parcel of the whole confidentiality thing. On days like today, it’s important to write about other frustrations (trust me on this). Today’s topic: scare tactics in government funded letters. I received my social security statement the other day and it has a lovely section on the front page entitled “About Social Security’s future… ...

There’s an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry, the link is behind the subscription firewall), about a mechanical engineering graduate student at Ohio University. After being invited to stay on after his masters and persue a Ph.D., he started having difficulty with his advisor. To help resolve his difficulties, he went to speak with the university ombudsman who advised him to examine disertations in the university library so that he might see where he was going wrong and what his advisor might want. ...

About a month ago, I was in Des Moines and talking with my mother. She asked me what I thought about immigration and I noted that I didn’t consider it a particular problem because immigration is natural and pretty much unstoppable. Due to my poor recollection, I can’t recall if I also noted that the U.S. has historically had a fairly decent view of immigration, much better than the proposals being floated around in congress. These proposals, ironically, are similar to the policies in Europe that recently led to rioting in France. A few weeks after I got back, the NY Times published a lengthy article on the economics of immigration which fairly summarized my views and even brought up some great information I hadn’t heard before. I sent it to my mother, and being the former English teacher that she is, she asked me to summarize it (aka, write a book report). So, here we go – a bit out of order from the original in order to better present the material, but basically a summary of “The Immigration Equation by Roger Lowenstein.