It’s was always a bit startling to me to hear a student from Oxford or Cambridge say, “I’m reading ancient history” or “I’m reading Victorian literature.”  A statement of that kind is light years away from the basic orientation of the typical student in an American college or university.  There one hears, “I’m majoring in recreation management.”  (“Majoring”; another noun turned into a verb.)  The image that springs to mind is that of one of those semi-professional athletes managing to take a little time away from the football field to go to the gym and practice blowing a whistle and yelling, “Hey, listen up, you guys!”  I happen to know that one superstar running back, when he was at a Pennsylvania university (not Penn State; Joe Paterno still has standards, I hear), never attended a class in his four years there.  The arrangement was that his profs would give him Cs, but that he would not graduate.  When he arrived in the NFL he had to have tutors to help him learn the playbook.

When I began attempting to teach at what was then considered one of the three best Christian liberal arts colleges in the country, and was immediately in trouble essentially for trying to impose some academic standards in my courses, an older colleague pointed out, “This is a student-driven institution, and you’re expected to mollycoddle them.”  Another colleague remarked, “Don’t lower your standards.  Just lower your expectations,” but I knew that if I followed that advice I’d give all Fs.

At the end of the academic year the vice president for academic affairs (whatever happened to “dean”?)  called me to his office to explain that the tide of student opinion was running so strongly against me that he felt I should look for another position.  He explained that I was a scholar, and that this was a teaching institution, so I didn’t belong there.

What was that again?

Here is the sort of thing that was happening:  I was teaching second-year Spanish, and one day I called on a student to do a simple transformation during a drill.  He asked, “What kind of word is that second one there?”

I answered him, “That’s an adjective.  You do know what an adjective is, don’t you?”  I almost felt as if it were unkind to ask such an insulting question; mollycoddling, you understand.  He admitted that he didn’t know one part of speech from another because he had never studied English grammar.  My head was swimming at that point, because the next topic in the textbook was “Uses of the Imperfect Subjunctive in Adverbial Clauses of Purpose and Proviso.”

When I expressed my surprise, he said, “I’ll bet almost no one in the class has studied English grammar.”  I called for a show of hands, and virtually all of them went up.  The image of a flight school for pigs sprang to mind.  My job was to teach Spanish to students who had no clue about how English works.  Oh, yes, and to teach Hispanic literatures to students who were barely capable of reading Dick and Jane.

On another day, an alleged student asked me what tense a verb in his sentence was in.  I told him and then reminded him that he had, after all, studied that tense the previous semester.  He retorted sharply that he could not be held responsible for anything presented in a previous semester.  I told him to try that one on the Math Department and then come back so we could talk about it.  In other words, the concept of actually learning something was foreign to him.

Back to those Oxbridge people.  When they said they were “reading” in the various areas, they meant that they were expected to prepare themselves, under the guidance of their tutors, for some tough final examinations.  The fundamental way to accomplish this was to do copious readings of the pertinent texts.  Lectures on the various topics would be made available by professors who were first of all research-oriented scholars.  In the beginning, a university was a place where scholars got together to offer guidance to young men, and later women as well, who wanted to become educated.  (And yes, I’m well aware of the wild partying that went on the Middle Ages too.)

Actually, I believe it was Socrates who said education was a student on one end of a log and a student on the other.  So much for billion-dollar campuses.

Become educated?  What an antiquated notion.  In chapel at the above-mentioned college, one speaker asked the seniors in the front rows why they were there.  To a person they answered, “To get a degree.”  I was assured by a more experienced faculty member that anyone answering, “To get an education” would have been disgraced.

As a corollary, faculty members are expected to be oriented towards getting passing grades from their students in the form of evaluations.  At a university where I taught, I was on the Promotion and Tenure Committee when a friend of mine came up for promotion.  His student evaluations were stellar, but another professor, who had taken over a popular linguistics course of his, pointed out that his course was set up so that the students could cheat, and that he gave all A’s.  Ironically, the professor who pointed that out had a course of her own that ran on a point system weighted so heavily in favor of class attendance that someone noticed that a dog could be enrolled and, if it wandered into the classroom each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, would pass the course.

I can’t confirm it, but I have read twice of a study in which it was determined that only 30% of US college graduates can even read a label and understand what it says.  Surprised?  Come, now; these are the future leaders of America?  Or are they the present leaders?  Maybe this explains why our Congress gets a satisfaction rating of 9% and some of us wonder how it got that high.

It is highly hypocritical of us even to keep calling these diploma mills “institutions of higher learning.”  The reason we were instructed to mollycoddle those synthetic students at that student-driven institution was that if we didn’t they would go to another school where they would be mollycoddled, and take their parents’ money with them.  Our school would fold and we would be out of a job.  And that’s the bottom line.

I retired early.

Iran Wants Cartel Weapon; Moscow Less Aggressive

Last Tuesday, October 21^st Russia, Iran and Qatar, that account for over 60% of global natural gas reserves, agreed to set up a “gas OPEC,” during a meeting in Tehran, Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said. The three largest gas exporters want to drive prices up, given the recent dramatic drop after the summer peak.

They have no power to change prices now, as gas prices are regulated by the oil and petrochemicals markets since there is no such thing as an independent gas market. The alliance established in Iran’s capital is in fact a “big gas troika.”

The OPEC-style gas cartel will be finalized on November 18 in Moscow which must mean the group’s charter will be adopted, a document which has been in the works for two years, ever since Iran initiated the idea.

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) comprising 16 member states has no charter, its decisions are not binding on its members and it is no more than a discussion club. Forming a cartel has been discussed since 2001.

Adopting a single charter has been the long-standing stumbling block for a “gas OPEC.” Iran wants the gas cartel to be modeled after the original OPEC, setting quotas for gas production thus pushing prices up while damaging the U.S. economy.

Moscow is at least pretending to be trying to avoid aggressive policies suggesting that the new organization should manage joint gas projects and gas transportation issues.

Transporting natural gas is especially important for Russia and its gas export monopoly. It is crucial for Russia that Central Asian gas go through Russia on the way to Europe rather than bypass it via the Caspian seabed or go through its sly ally, Iran. US President Reagan blocking Russia’s gas pipeline into Europe nailed the Soviet Union’s economic coffin shut and pushed it over the edge into oblivion.

Gazprom’s gas supplies to Europe have been locked in to long term contracts for the next one to three decades. Iran’s gas industry is so disorganized that, despite its huge reserves, the country has to export Turkmen gas under some of its export projects. Turkmenistan, for its part, has shown a rather cool attitude toward the gas OPEC idea.

Qatar is a new player on the global gas market. Most of its projects are still in the works and involve LNG deliveries also to Europe, and again, under long-term contracts. If it tries to limit those deliveries, its niche will be immediately seized by rivals - Libya, Algeria and others.

It follows from the above that there is no global gas market; there isn’t a European gas market either. There are no “global” gas prices - they are set individually for each contract (usually a long-term).

As a result, the potential gas cartel cannot influence gas prices through restrictive quotas. By restricting exports, gas-producing countries would only harm themselves by cutting their own incomes. The crude oil OPEC cartel can impose quotas but members often cheat.

By a strange irony of fate, gas prices in Europe are based on the market value of crude oil and petrochemicals, which gas producers have no power over.

The disgruntled attitude of the three countries richest in the commodity is easy to understand. Oil prices have plummeted to half of what they were during the summer peak, and natural gas followed suit. Mr Miller and his counterparts are getting desperate because they cannot influence the process.

However, the very idea of establishing some sort of gas cartel is bound to raise concerns with European consumers, further complicating Gazprom’s investments in Europe, as if European partners weren’t already wary of dealing with the Russian monopoly.

The Russian government must certainly realize that “gas OPEC” is a harmful idea. Energy saying earlier this month that the wording was inappropriate because Russia has no intention of regulating gas prices or production levels.

This article include information published by the Russian news agency in English - RIA Novosti, and other open sources and the authors analysis and opinion.

Dobson’s ADF To Challenge IRS Ban All Way To Supreme Court

Lawyers from the Arizona based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) are recruiting several dozen pastors to endorse a political candidate on Sunday, Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal

Revenue Service rules. Liberal ministers say the Internal Revenue Service must keep a restriction against politics in the pulpit. ADF’s ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship, and of course the often fierce argument about separation of church and state pr from church and state as you prefer.

The Rev. Eric Williams, a minister with the liberal United Church of Christ, planned to file a complaint with the IRS Monday against the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal organization based in Arizona that is challenging the restriction as unconstitutional. ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. “It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society.”

The battle over the clergy’s privileges, rights and responsibilities in the political world is not new. Politicians of all stripes court the support — explicit or otherwise — of religious leaders. Allegations surface every political season of a preacher crossing the line. Rather than wait for the IRS to investigate an alleged violation, the ADF intends to create dozens of violations and take the U.S. government to court on First Amendment grounds.

The root of the matter is a 1954 amendment to the IRS code that says, in part, nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in, or intervene in . . . any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.”

So far three dozen church leaders from more than 20 states have agreed to deliver a political sermon, naming political names in federal, state or local election. Others have called for hundreds of

clergy to preach on Sept. 21 about the value of the separation of church and state.

Founded in 1994 by Christian conservatives including James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and William R. Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, the ADF has challenged same-sex marriage initiatives, stem cell research and rules that limit the distance protesters must keep from abortion patients. It helped the Boy Scouts ban gay Scout leaders.

Regular church attenders favor conservative candidates and John McCain 63%-28% while non-church attenders are partial to Obama and other liberal candidates by 51%-29%

As Todd Purdum, one of the many Stepford captains of the USS MSNBC Obama, a very beautiful ship, said, they (the Republicans) do not want us to “over analyze” their speeches, uh, make that, ” do regular analysis” so they are staying on a tight schedule.

If MSNBC bias did not exist, Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate. Their anti Clinton bias is only exceeded by their anti Palin bias.

To beat that, sexist Carla Fiorina, a previous executive of Hewlet Packard who made an executive controversial decison, voted against by the heirs to Hewlett and Packard founders, which ultimatley save their bacon, chimed in.

She pointed out the historical practice of both women and men, of “calling women showhorses rather than workhorses” says Gov Palin has made more decisions in her two years of Governor (let alone being a mayor of a small town, raising five children with a husband and knowing how to hunt and standing up to the good ole boy network including many corrupt Republican establishment types in Alaska, including those in her own party who after first losing as a Lt Gov candidate, came back to defeat the likes of then Alaska Gov Frank Murkowski) than Barack Obama has made in his life including his entire political life which seems to have been spent jumping from job to job running for president permanently.

If Barrack Obama had beaten Frank Murkowski, he would have been heralded as a savior and an Icon of freedom, let along of style and sexuality, in the likes of Sainted John Kennedy. Kennedy was actually a worse president than the current George Bush although it is close. That sentence means I have no friends any where in the world.

Rather than reporting and investigating these ideas further, the ones Carla spoke about, that Presidential candidate Barack Obama has less executive experience than Vice Presidential candidate Palin (a President is a CEO not a periodic voter, whose absence is usually not noticed, as only one of 100 (Senate) or 535 (Congressman),  the executive, the President with cabinets, or Governors and staff, still make daily decisions to make the government work.

Kinda like the MSNBC game

Keith Olberman added adroitly to the discussion by telling us that Obama was a cheerleader once in his life, not sure if he threw papers at he lense and broke it or not, do you remember? Yes, he is a joke, but a joke many rely on for news, disguised as clever partisanship. Sportingly clever. I enjoy watching him like I enjoy the Simpsons.

In April 2005, friends and family of golfer Chris DiMarco were crossing their fingers when Chris found himself tied with Tiger Woods by the end of the Masters. In the first sudden death hole, we thought Chris was going to win as Tiger was off to the left and long. But then the impossible happened. As the AP reported, Tiger chipped in and his ball aimed straight and true to the hole, where it paused right on the cup’s lip. After a second or two, which felt like an eternity, the ball slowly rolled over into the hole giving Tiger another Master’s win. To this day, that shot is considered one of the most amazing golf shots in history. How could Chris have possibly competed against that?

I think Chris and that guy who lost to Michael Phelps by a fingernail should get together and talk. I should probably extend that invitation to anyone who lost to Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps or Bolt, that amazing runner. But it doesn’t only happen in sports. Ask Hillary.

Tiger, Phelps and Bolt are all what I would call “Phenoms”. And heaven help anyone who competes against them. I truly feel sorry for the DiMarcos, and other swimmers for if it had not been for these rivals they would have easily won. But they had the bad luck to be on the playing field when these Phenoms are at the top of their game.

Obama is not a true Phenom, such as these athletes. It wasn’t until he started to gain momentum earlier this year that he turned into a Phenom. Even though people still were voting heavily for Hillary, the media had crowned him the next political whiz kid, the next JFK. It was to be expected that because of their similar racial mix, there were more and more articles comparing Obama to Tiger Woods, thereby implying that Obama was as much a winner as Tiger. The stories grew until everyone, even Obama, assumed that he was unstoppable. That Obama was “The One”.

The convention this week will work to convince the rest of the world (and I do mean world and not just the USA) that Obama is the chosen. Once both conventions are over the race moves into overdrive for the next two months. As DiMarco, and many of the Olympic athletes would tell you, it is not easy to defeat a Phenom.

McCain’s campaign is doing a brilliant job. Athletes are Phenoms based on measurable results. But other than barely beating Hillary, Obama is a Phenom because the press said so. It is sort of like the old story about the king’s clothes. This time it is McCain’s campaign which is pointing out that the king isn’t wearing any clothes, or rather that Obama is not a Phenom. In fact, McCain is ridiculing Obama for even thinking that he is “The One”.

Will this strategy work? I don’t know but I sure hope so. Making fun of Obama is better than believing the hype. For then McCain would be trying to compete against Obama as a Phenom, and as Chris DiMarco and many many others can tell you, it is nearly impossible to win against a true Phenom.