Thomas Jefferson had an adulterous affair with at least one slave. Benjamin Franklin (I know he wasn't a U.S. President), it is suspected, was a homosexual. John F. Kennedy had at least a couple of extramarital affairs. Yet somehow I am supposed to believe that Clinton having sex with someone other than his spouse tarnished the entire image of the Presidential Office. Somehow I feel that it had more to do with the media and the political parties flashing the colorful images to the public at large everyday for months. With the three people I initially named, everything was kept very quiet. No one really seemed to make much of it. If there really has been a loss of respect for the Office, perhaps it was the conservatives' very lack of respect for the Office that led to the public having less respect for it. No real telling, but this has always bugged me.
Google is going to change the way it displays ads. No longer will they be nice little text ads related to what you are looking for. No Sir-ee-Bob. It is funny because I had just finished saying how much I liked Google ads for the very reason that they were not so audacious and were relevant to what you were looking for when I came across the news stories reporting the change.
I had a great comment weekend. My comment-whoring needs are feeling more satiated. I think I actually get more comments from my friends now that I post these things to a blog then when I simply emailed. Plus I get reactions form random strangers that I have never met. It's great because I get to hear what people are thinking even if I don't necessarily agree with it, and they get to see what others are thinking at the same time. Very efficient.
My weekend was good. The Jewish food cooking experience went off without a hitch. My girlfriend's mother loved the food. Her father couldn't really taste anything because he's sick so I'm not sure he enjoyed it as much. I made noodle pudding and potato pancakes. The rest of the weekend was spent doing pointless shopping and a reunion brunch. Nice.
There are new reports out now that say watching TV is good for you because it's very "high brow" with so many plot lines and requires more intelligence than in days of old. This is good for all of you that simply cannot bring yourselves to parting the covers of a book.
More reports are showing problems with the higher education system. It turns out that students are not all working hard to get great grades, and that half of the people that start college, do not finish. Somehow I thought this was old news. Now there's a push for reform to make students work harder because ... dammit college is supposed to teach and is not supposed to be fun. Teaching and fun do not go together. Sooner or later people have to realize that if people want to learn they will and if they don't, they won't. One point the article made is that a lot of college professors hate teaching. Many universities hire top academic scholars who prefer to research than teach. I think perhaps they should rethink this vision.
I found a Webservice called audible.com that allows you to get some of your favorite news programs and books in an mp3 or mp3-like format so you can listen to it wherever you go. I am so excited about this because I love certain radio programs but am often not home to hear them. I try recording them on tape, but my car only plays cd's and I only have a discman and an mp3 player for the gym ... so it is hard to catchup.
Oh, and I heard something on the news this weekend that I had heard on a blog about a month earlier. Drinking beverages out of those hard plastic contaners is hazardous to your health. (I am not sure about regular plastic containers - like Dasani water bottles - because the story only specified the hard plastic bottles.) Apparently, the plastic contains a chemical that acts like a synthetic estrogen, and it leeches out easily into the liquid that the container holds. The scientists that did this study were not surprised too much by all of this I guess. They were surprised at how much is leaches out, and the build-up of the chemical in the average person.
Oh, and by clicking on the "Next Blog" link a few times today I learned that there is a blog ... run(?) by NFL cheerleaders.
Good times.
Google is going to change the way it displays ads. No longer will they be nice little text ads related to what you are looking for. No Sir-ee-Bob. It is funny because I had just finished saying how much I liked Google ads for the very reason that they were not so audacious and were relevant to what you were looking for when I came across the news stories reporting the change.
I had a great comment weekend. My comment-whoring needs are feeling more satiated. I think I actually get more comments from my friends now that I post these things to a blog then when I simply emailed. Plus I get reactions form random strangers that I have never met. It's great because I get to hear what people are thinking even if I don't necessarily agree with it, and they get to see what others are thinking at the same time. Very efficient.
My weekend was good. The Jewish food cooking experience went off without a hitch. My girlfriend's mother loved the food. Her father couldn't really taste anything because he's sick so I'm not sure he enjoyed it as much. I made noodle pudding and potato pancakes. The rest of the weekend was spent doing pointless shopping and a reunion brunch. Nice.
There are new reports out now that say watching TV is good for you because it's very "high brow" with so many plot lines and requires more intelligence than in days of old. This is good for all of you that simply cannot bring yourselves to parting the covers of a book.
More reports are showing problems with the higher education system. It turns out that students are not all working hard to get great grades, and that half of the people that start college, do not finish. Somehow I thought this was old news. Now there's a push for reform to make students work harder because ... dammit college is supposed to teach and is not supposed to be fun. Teaching and fun do not go together. Sooner or later people have to realize that if people want to learn they will and if they don't, they won't. One point the article made is that a lot of college professors hate teaching. Many universities hire top academic scholars who prefer to research than teach. I think perhaps they should rethink this vision.
I found a Webservice called audible.com that allows you to get some of your favorite news programs and books in an mp3 or mp3-like format so you can listen to it wherever you go. I am so excited about this because I love certain radio programs but am often not home to hear them. I try recording them on tape, but my car only plays cd's and I only have a discman and an mp3 player for the gym ... so it is hard to catchup.
Oh, and I heard something on the news this weekend that I had heard on a blog about a month earlier. Drinking beverages out of those hard plastic contaners is hazardous to your health. (I am not sure about regular plastic containers - like Dasani water bottles - because the story only specified the hard plastic bottles.) Apparently, the plastic contains a chemical that acts like a synthetic estrogen, and it leeches out easily into the liquid that the container holds. The scientists that did this study were not surprised too much by all of this I guess. They were surprised at how much is leaches out, and the build-up of the chemical in the average person.
Oh, and by clicking on the "Next Blog" link a few times today I learned that there is a blog ... run(?) by NFL cheerleaders.
Good times.
What bothers me is that some Presidents push their religion on everyone in America. People came to America to avoid persecution of their beliefs and we have the right to believe in whatever religion we choose--which is fine. But I think that a President should be impartial and not say such things as, "God Bless," or "God is watching over us". It's not fair to some people because he's promoting his religion as the "right" religion.
ReplyDeleteTeacher's deserve a higher salary. They are guiding the next generations into what they will become. I think this is taken for granted. All of the school systems and government grants etc. just give the schools/faculty as little as possible. The teachers in turn,I think, are becoming more jaded and don't necesarily care about the quality they are giving because they are hating their jobs.
Congrats on the cooking!
Your comments are well taken.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with your first point is that even our founding fathers invoked God while holding public office. So it is unclear if they ever really thought the separation of church and state should be as strong as you think. I agree with your point, but the argument seems tenable.
Your second point I also agree with to the extent of public schools - high schools, junior highs, and such. With colleges and the like, I would disagee. Many college level faculty members get paid quite well. However, schools garner excellent credentials and reputations from their scholarly publications and research achievements, not from faculty that enjoy teaching. Universities will generally emphasize the professors' writing and research requirements as opposed to their student reviews. It's a flawed system one would think.
Thanks. :-)
I think the rise of feminism, the increased presence of women as part of the media and audience, may have contributed to contemporary outrage. And dispersed ownership of the media, so it's hard to contain information.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of which, I don't like the fact that Hilary "stayed."
I loved Clinton and what he did for the country even though he had a girl "on the side". My teacher today in history expressed her conservative republican opinion about Clinton, I found it pretty ammusing.
ReplyDeleteAs for the teaching thing, I gotta admit, I am far more capible of doing work than what I show in school. I've taken the harder classes before and usually breezed right through them. Problem is the standardized testing, the teachers teach to pass the tests and not what is important or anything that relates to the times. I'm going to be a teacher after college, that's what my major will probably be and hopefully I can help to try and change that. Even colleges now are looking less and less at SAT scores and ACT scores. The only thing I can say about the salary topic is teachers don't teach for the money, that's for sure. Yes I think they should get paid more but at what problems will that cause for the students? If anybody can goto school for 4 years, get a teaching degree and get paid 70 thousand a year, you'll get people less passionate about their job and more interested in the money. Peace Out
BJ,
ReplyDeleteThat is really an excellent point.
do you have a link to the report aboutthe hard plastic containers? i use them and i'd like to see more info...
ReplyDeletethanks.
I don't know where I initially read about it but I found numerous sites discussing it just with a simple Google search. This should get you on your way:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/printerFriendly.cfm?issueID=66&articleID=890
http://www.infocafe.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=247
http://www.checnet.org/healthehouse/chemicals/chemicals-detail-print.asp?Main_ID=275
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=202093
amber says...
ReplyDeleteand who pushed for your current blog/email system? :)
congratz on the jewish cooking. mmm...latkahs.
hooray! i feel better watching tv now. i've suspected this for a while. i'm glad that there are professionals who are making this claim now. it all depends on what you watch...
yes, many top academics are too busy with research to devote a good amount of time to students. and i know some people who are interested in teaching at the college level but not research.
i never heard that ben franklin was suspected to be homosexual.
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI think officially you and another friend of mine pushed for the blog, but the email aspect was more a product of Jenny's demand that she be emailed everytime I updated the blog. But I think there's credit to everyone, overall.