Right Wing Nation

I’m posting a number of youtube clips here, so if you’re interested, click the more tag below.

First posted on November 26, 2006:

When I was in high school, I expected the university to be more difficult, and I expected that my university classes would require more work. And for the most part, the university didn’t disappoint.

Today, students no longer expect the university to be difficult, nor do they expect to have to do much work. And the dumbing down at the university has been overstated; for the most part, the university classroom is as difficult and work intensive as it was when I was an undergraduate.

In fact, students today have a lot of expectations I did not when I was an undergraduate. I don’t recall expecting that I should get an A because of how much I studied, or because I “tried really hard.” I don’t recall expecting that mediocre work that barely fulfilled the requirements would get me an A. I don’t recall expecting to receive partial credit if my answer was incorrect. I don’t recall expecting that I could pass a course while rarely going to class or doing only part of the assigned work.

Why did I not have these expectations that students now have? My high school teachers assigned a lot of homework, and we either did it, or we failed the class. And I might add that our parents made sure we did our homework (no supper until you’ve finished your homework) and punished us severely for bad grades (in my parents’ home, anything less than an A was equally unacceptable).

When I coordinated that ESL writing program, one of the ways in which I beat my head against the wall was by telling teachers to be careful of creating expectations in their students. They didn’t much care if they did or not, and it appears that today’s primary and secondary school teachers also don’t care.

According to a study published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, 48% of faculty members expect students to do six or more hours of homework every week, while only 17% of secondary school teachers expected that much work. Fifty-five percent of secondary school teachers expected only three to five hours of homework a week, and a full 28% — that’s over a quarter — expected no homework to two hours of homework a week.

As far as I know, every university defines a college credit as one hour of class and two hours of outside work a week. Most classes are three-credit classes (yes, there are a few one- and two-credit courses in the catalog, but very few). By the university definition, then, a three-credit course is three hours of class and six hours of out of class work a week. In order to be full-time, a student must take at least 12 credits per semester — that would be a minimum of 12 hours of classes and 24 hours of out of class work per week.

May I humbly suggest that parents who think their kids get too much homework are, to say the least, misguided? Tell me, parents, what are your kids going to do when they get to the university, and are suddenly required to work outside of class for the first time in their lives? If you’re going to call me at the end of the semester and inform me that little Johnny should have gotten an A even if he didn’t do the work for the class, you’re in for a reality check if you think I care what you think.

If I did, you’d be teaching the class.

Certainly, the quality of homework is a different issue. But secondary school teachers require too little homework, not too much. They are setting up the expectation that all students have to do is sit on their thumbs at the university and pass — like they do in high school. And that’s hardly fair to the students.

But it’s also unfair to students to allow idiots like this to teach them in class:

An English teacher in Rhode Island says that “the only way we as teachers know what is going on in colleges across the state is when former students come back to visit us and tell of their experiences.”

Really? You didn’t go to a university, then? Or were you an ed major so you could avoid having to take any real university courses, is that how you mysteriously don’t know “what is going on”?

Teachers, stop sending your students the message that they get something for nothing. And parents, if your kids were doing what they’re supposed to be doing, studying, instead of all those idiotic soccer mom extra-curricular activities, they’d have time to actually do homework, because like it or not, they’re going to work their little butts off when they get to college if they don’t want to flunk out, and we couldn’t care less what grade you think your little Johnny should or should not get.

And here’s a few other reality checks for you:

• “No late assignments” means exactly that.
• “No excused absences” means exactly that.
• “No makeup exams” means exactly that.
• “No extra credit” means exactly that.

Since you’re little Johnny’s teachers and parents, you might want to pitch in and help us teach little Johnny the most important lesson he’ll ever learn, that he won’t get rewarded for doing nothing.

So after a long string of strike-outs, there’s a new restaurant favorite.

Baby’s Burgers and Shakes.

Everything was great (even the cheeseburger buns were toasted). Yeah, it ain’t Johnny Angel’s. Baby’s is retro, but Johnny Angel’s was like it had never changed. Hey, the hostess was wearing a poodle skirt. It was a lot of fun, and the food was great (did I say that already?)

Tim Blair is terrified.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Moving Up, but you have couple A, couple B, and couple C. Couple A buys couple B’s house, and couple B buys couple C’s house. Everybody plays ring around the houses, redecorates, then couple C comes back to see what it looks like now that couple B owns it, and couple B comes back to see what it looks like now that couple A owns it. Anyway.

There was just an episode on, and one couple bought a big Victorian–a real Victorian, not a pseudo-Victorian, and Victorian in every detail, exterior and interior. You know, flocked wallpaper, heavy curtains, stained glass windows. Victorian everywhere. Sure, it was a bit much for me–too damned many flowers everywhere, and too damned much foo-foo, but that’s Victorian. So the couple who bought it moved in, and turned it into a contemporary interior.

And I have to ask: Why buy a Victorian if you don’t like Victorian?

At least they left the big, stained glass front door.

Iraq the Model: Why are the Democrats doing this?

Another one of those studies that make you wonder how much money was wasted on it.

A whole site dedicated to trashing the hamdouche, David Caruso! Yes!

This Thursday evening: Spiderman Tech. On the Garbage History Channel.

Jack M. is worried about Martian polar bears (it’s all Bush’s fault, naturally).

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Jargon is the coinage and usage of terminology in a specific field. Jargon is a shorthand by defining terms for concepts that come up frequently in a field, and defining terms for highly-specific concepts in that field. Jargon also has sociolinguistic functions (e.g., it differentiates outsiders from insiders), but they aren’t relevant here.

Buzzwords are not jargon. While jargon refers to concepts, buzzwords are meaningless. The ultimate test for whether something is jargon or a buzzword is this: Ask the person who used it for a definition. If he can define the term in basic English, it’s jargon. If he cannot, it’s a buzzword. (Buzzwords must be differentiated from academic nonsense, such as contrastive rhetoric, since academic nonsense at least represents an idea.)

For all academic fields, there is an inverse correlation between the number of buzzwords used and the amount of substantial content.

Along with the humanities, education is among the richest in buzzwords and weakest in content. There is very little jargon in education (I’m only saying “very little” to hedge, since I cannot think of even one example of true jargon in education), because there is very little content. To mask the dearth of content, education flings out perhaps more buzzwords than any other academic field. In order for a buzzword to mask a lack of content, it must appear to be jargon–that is, anyone hearing or reading it must form an opinion about what it means. Those using buzzwords must avoid at all costs the possibility that somebody will ask for a definition.

Any popular term or phrase in education is a buzzword, but the one I want to discuss is “student-centered,” as in “student-centered classroom,” or “student-centered campus,” or “student-centered curriculum.”

This is actually an excellent example of a buzzword. I’m quite sure as soon as you see “student-centered,” you form an immediate impression of what it means. Even its critics believe that it means something–yet, it doesn’t mean anything.

A word can have more than one meaning (we call that ambiguity), but a word can’t mean anything you want it to mean (we call that Lewis Carroll). “Student-centered” can mean anything the speaker wants it to mean. Over the years, I have seen all of the following given as examples of “student-centered learning” or a “student-centered classroom”:

• sitting in a circle on the floor “being balloons”
• doing interpretive dances in class
• allowing students to read whatever they want
• playing a CD of current music in the lecture hall before the start of an otherwise traditional lecture class
• allowing students to “grade” other students’ work, then grading it traditionally, and assigning the traditional grade
• going to class drunk in inappropriate clothing, talking about how good sex was the night before, and then giving an otherwise traditional lecture (well, for a drunk person, anyway)
• having “read-arounds” and “write-arounds,” where students write an answer to some question, drop it in a hat, everybody takes one, and reads them around the room

Exactly how is sitting around on the floor “being balloons” or doing interpretive dances in class “student-centered”? What is “student-centered” about playing a CD before the lecture begins? Is having students write an answer to a question, then read them around the room “student-centered” in some way I don’t grasp? Or how about presenting yourself as a drunken whore to your students, how does that place them in the “center” of the class?

As long as we assume that “student” and “centered” are the English words “student” and “centered,” nothing about any of these can be called “student-centered,” yet I have not only seen people present these things as examples, but whole rooms full of academics nod their heads sagely when the examples are given, licensing them as examples of “student-centered learning,” or a “student-centered campus.”

Look in the back of the Chronicle, or at higheredjobs.com, and you’ll see ads looking for “student-centered” teachers, or “proponents of student-centered learning,” and even requests for statements about how the applicant would implement “student-centered learning” in his classroom. So even though it doesn’t mean anything, it’s been elevated in many cases to a job requirement.

That person I know who plays a CD before his otherwise traditional lecture calls it “student-centered” because that’s what the university wants to hear. He’s not stupid. I’m quite sure if I got him behind closed doors that he would admit that there’s nothing “student-centered” about it. He, then, stands in contrast to the “true believers,” such as the woman who does interpretive dance in her class (though it’s unclear what, exactly, she thinks she’s acccomplishing). In between the two falls what I call the “believer skeptic,” such as the woman who has students trade papers and “grade” them, then takes them home, grades them, and reports her grades, and not the students’. She kneels to the altar of “student-centered learning,” but isn’t quite convinced that students are the best judges of writing.

I’m quite sure you could go to an ed conference and present a strictly traditional format class as “student-centered” and it would be accepted as such by the audience. After all, students take the exams. Student-centered. Students do the assignments. Student-centered. Students do the assigned readings. Student-centered.

It’s a meaningless buzzword. Stop it in its tracks. The next time you hear somebody say “student-centered,” stop the speaker and tell him that it’s a meaningless word, or it will become an even more popular fad.

Might as well have some fun with PETA, eh?

Hey, this is fun!

One more can’t hurt!

I’m definitely going to Baby’s today.

How could I have forgotten? I shopped at Sam’s Club (that kills the rainforest or something, right?) and bought beef (you know how all those cow farts are bringing about global warming).

Shop at Sam’s!
Eat more beef!
Rape Mother Earth!

I figured there must be something to this doing nothing at all with any consequences and calling it “doing what I can!” liberals are always doing, so I decided to try it for myself. The first question was what cause I could do nothing at all of consequence about, but would make me feel like I had. And the obvious one, of course, was raping Mother Earth!

The second question was just how much I was willing to do (or not do). There are limits. I’m not inclined to take a poo “in the woods hunched over like an animal,” like Drew Barrymore, though when she says, “it was awesome!” I’m quite sure she thought it was.

Once I’d “worked through” those issues, I was ready. So here’s what I did yesterday to rape Mother Earth:

• I left the hot water running the whole time I shaved.
• I started the Explorer early and let it run in the driveway, and
• I took the long way around doing errands (it also happens to be the most convenient way, but that’s unimportant), thus maximizing the amount of petroleum-based, greenhouse gasses I belched into the atmosphere (go global warming!)
• I used more the one sheet of TP

So what did you do yesterday to rape Mother Earth? Are you doing your part?

Note to self:

Self, do not eat doughnuts while making doughnuts.

Bloomington doesn’t have a lot of great doughnuts. When Kroger made their own, the sour cream cake doughnuts were certainly close to heart-stoppingly wonderful (literally), but they no longer make their own. Bloomington does have Crescent Donut (affectionately called Greaseant by locals–in Indiana, “greasy” sounds like “greazy”), a locally-owned place, and their doughnuts are really good, but that’s about it.

So far, I’ve neither found nor heard of any great doughnuts here, but I found this recipe over at Indy Foodie, and I’m making these first thing tomorrow morning:

Drop Doughnuts

1 egg
1/2 c. sugar
1 T. melted butter
1/2 c. milk
1/2 t. salt
1/8 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. cinnamon
2 t. baking powder
1 1/2 c. flour
sugar
oil for frying

Mix all ingredients and poor by teaspoonsful into a few inches of hot oil. Just do a few at a time. When they are ready to turn over they will start to flip on their own…some may need a little help. These should be cooked till they are a nice dark brown. Remove from oil and place on a paper towel. While they are still hot drop them in a paper bag that has 1/2 cup of sugar in it. Shake them around till they are well coated. Eat them hot as that’s when they are the best!

Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie

This is an Amish recipe that has become a Hoosier classic, much like tenderloin sandwiches, morels, or persimmon pudding (I’m betting sugar cream pie can be found in Ohio, too). I’ve seen something referred to as Sugar Pie here, and considering that this is also one of the big Amish states, I’m assuming it’s more or less the same thing. There’s an Indiana company that makes these frozen, and they’re extremely good, but I haven’t seen anything like that in the frozen pie sections here. Anyway, this is easy to make–just mix it up, pour it in, and bake it. I like to gild the lily and eat this slighly warm with lots of whipped cream all over it, but you may feel that’s a tad too much.

A single 9-inch pie crust

1/3 c. flour
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 1/2 c. heavy cream
2 egg yolks
2 t. vanilla
1 T. butter, cut into tiny pieces
nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 450, but do not bake the crust blind.

Combine sugar, flour, cream, yolks, and vanilla, and pour into pie shell. Lightly sprinkle the top with nutmeg and dot with the butter. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for 30 more minutes, until filling is set.

For three years, Bloomington had Johnny Angel’s, a 50s sandwich shop, with the most amazing food, and thick, delicious milkshakes that almost rivaled the Chocolate Moose. Perhaps the best thing on their menu, other than the fries and the shakes and the onion-y cheeseburgers, were the tenderloin sandwiches (this is a Hoosier thing, folks), some of the best I’ve eaten. Like Gray Brothers, they did a hellacious business, and like Gray Brothers, they suddenly closed for no apparent reason.

State College may have something similar: Baby’s Burgers and Shakes. I’m thinking of going there this weekend. From looking at the menu, it’s more 50s retro, while Johnny Angel’s was a trip back in time–no caesar salad or fried mozzarella sticks on their menu–but it looks worth checking out, and they have peanut butter milkshakes.

One local thing I haven’t tried seems to be a Connecticut thing a local brought back from going to college there, Red’s Steamed Cheeseburgers. Okay, it sounds disgusting–and no, it’s not “steamed” as in what White Castle does, they’re cooked in a steamer. However, several people have insisted that they’re really good, so maybe one of these days. Other than Baby’s, I want to go downtown (ugh) and try one of the Chinese places we haven’t tried yet. Folks, I’m literally dying for edible Chinese.

Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: My list of where to eat (and not to eat) if you find yourself in Bloomington, Indiana. I’ve limited this to local restaurants (no chains), restaurants that are still in business (as far as I can discover), and I’m not including pizza joints–because Bloomington has more pizza joints than State College has restaurants, it’s amazing, every month or two, another one opens, and somehow, they all stay in business.

Well, there are a couple of exceptions to those limitations, and I’ll start with them.

Aver’s Pizza
1837 N. Kinser Pike

As a general rule, I object to the very concept of "gourmet pizza," but Aver’s does have one that’s extremely good, the Cream and Crimson (for you locals, cream and crimson are IU’s school colors, the Bloomington equivalent of blue and white), with thinly sliced roasted red potatoes, bacon (lots of it) and a gorgonzola cheese sauce. Really rich, and really good. Owned by the Lennie’s (keep reading).

Steak and Shake

I said local restaurants only, but God, I miss this place, not to mention the commercials (Why do we call it a milkshake? Because we can.) An Indiana chain, owned by Ed Kelley (RIP), the burgers are great, the fries are great, and they have the second-best milkshakes in town (for the best, keep reading). And speaking of chains:

Subway

Actually, Subway isn’t a Bloomington chain (and I don’t much like Subway), but yes, Jared Fogle is real, yes, he was an IU student at Bloomington, and yes, he lost over 200 pounds (supposedly) eating Subway sandwiches. I’ve met him. We had the same barber. As far as I know, he still lives in Bloomington.

Gray Brothers Cafeteria 555 S. Indiana St Mooresville, Indiana

Gray Brothers, one of the few still successful cafeterias in the US, largely because their food is so amazingly good, opened in Bloomington to great fanfare. After six months of incredible business (they were always packed), Gray Brothers suddenly closed with no warning. You’ll have to go to Mooresville, about thirty miles north, to the original.

Bears Place
1316 E 3rd St

On 3rd Street, which borders the south side of campus. Bears was a two-minute walk when I was in grad school, and I ate lunch there almost every day. There’s nothing phenomenal about the food, but it’s fine, it’s inexpensive, and you get it quick. It’s just down Jordan from the MAC (the IU opera house, the largest opera stage in the United States, and for locals, about three times the size seating-wise as the Eisenhower Auditorium).

Bombay House
416 E 4th St

Yawn. If you want Indian food, keep reading. There’s no point in going here.

Chapmans Restaurant & Banquet Center
300 S State Road 446

A reliably good, mid-century, nice restaurant, the kind of place you’d take your grandparents to if they were visiting and you wanted to go out for a nice meal with good service.

Chocolate Moose
401 S Walnut St

Okay, I’ve never eaten the food here (coneys, that sort of thing), but you’ve never had a chocolate milk shake until you’ve had one here, or at the Shakeburger in Paoli, Indiana. A tiny place the size of a carnival stand. And if you find yourself at the Shakeburger in Paoli, try the peanut butter milkshake–the broasted chicken rocks, too.

Cloverleaf Family Restaurant
2500 W 3rd St

A traditional diner, like Ladyman’s (RIP). It’s fine, but there’s better (keep reading).

Colorado Steak House
1635 N College ave

Also Ed Kelley’s, and so-so. The prime rib isn’t bad. Usually full of screaming, misbehaving small children (who for some reason love to come up and beat on you while their parents watch–this, by the way, seems to be more a Bloomington thing than a State College thing, since children here seem to be much better behaved).

Crazy Horse
214 W Kirkwood Ave # 416

Bar food. Okay for the genre.

Divino Mediterranean Cuisine
254 N Walnut st

We only ate here once, right after they opened (frankly, I’m surprised they’re still in business). The food was pretty good, actually, if a bit on the silly chi-chi side (you know, far too much attention paid to presentation). They had carpaccio on the menu when we went, and I ordered it. It had been marinated far too long, and was an unpleasant, soggy texture as a result–but the rest of the meal was quite nice.

Encore Cafe
3220 E 3rd St

This is one of the most overrated places in Bloomington. Go for the desserts, which are really good, and forget the mediocre, but way overpriced, food. It’s a silly, pretentious "Aren’t we artsy because we went for the warehouse look!" place, sort of a very small, chic and trendy take on the traditional cafeteria.

Gooldy and Sons Incorporated
926 W 17th St

Okay, this isn’t a restaurant at all, but a family-owned restaurant supply place. I really miss Gooldy and Sons. Not only do they have an amazing inventory, but when you buy something, it goes something like this. The price tag says, oh, $19.95, and the guy behind the counter looks at it and says, "I’ll let you have it for $14.95." And the price tag prices are really reasonable, too.

Hinkles Hamburgers
206 S Adams St

Hinkle’s is a Bloomington tradition, really, really, really great hamburgers.

Irish Lion
212 W. Kirkwood ave

I don’t know whether it’s me or what, but everybody loves this place and I just hate it. I mean, deep-fried pickles, are you serious?

Janko’s Little Zagreb
223 West 6th Street

I’m drooling just thinking about that ribeye. If you’re in Bloomington, Janko’s is a must-visit (but be prepared for IU Cream and Crimson basketball posters shrine to Bobby Knight decor–it’s IU after all,what do you expect).

Kilroys Bar & Grill
502 E Kirkwood Ave

More a bar than a grill , but they have really tremendous onion rings.

La Charreada
1720 N Walnut St

Eh, not bad for a northern Mexican chimichanga palace in the midwest. Not great, either.

La Torre
1155 S College Mall Rd

Vile.

Laughing Planet Cafe
322 E Kirkwood Av

I got dragged into this place against my will, kicking and screaming all the way. They serve only rainforest-friendly, transgendered-supportive, free-range and fair-trade vegan garbage food, like tofu burritos, nonsense like that. Everybody wears birkenstocks and stinks.

Le Petit Cafe
308 W 6th St

Very okay, little French place. I’m amazed they’ve been in business all these years, considering that you never see anybody there. I don’t particularly miss it, and I would never go there on my own, but if somebody wanted to go there, I wouldn’t object.

Lennies
1795 E 10th St

This is where the business school people lunch (beware–it’s small, and you’ll always wait until you go early or late), and they have one of the two best sandwiches in Bloomington, and the best roast beef sandwich in Bloomington, the Lennie’s Original (it’s the marinated red onions and the melted cheese, I think). And if you live in Bloomington and you’ve never had a Lennie’s Original, go as soon as you can and eat one.

Malibu Grill
106 N Walnut St

One of those uneven places where they have some good things on the menu and some not so good things. I’ve had pretty good meals there, and I’ve had a couple of unpleasant ones.

Mancinos Pizza & Grinders
916 N College Ave

The other of the two best sandwiches in Bloomington, the Italian Combo.

Mark Pis China Gate
3020 E 3rd St

This is one of the only two Chinese places I’ve listed, and for a couple of reasons. First, the turnover for Chinese places in Bloomington is very high, and the overall quality is much the same, mediocre, though there are always a couple of places that have some good things on the menu. Second, Mark Pi’s is not one of those places, but a sit-down restaurant with nice decor, and fairly good Cantonese and Mandarin food. As always, avoid like the plague Western Chinese items. And the other Chinese restaurant is:

Great Wall Restaurant
2038 N Walnut St

Another sit-down restaurant, with more traditional cheesy Chinese decor than Mark Pi’s (you know, plastic dragons, that sort of thing), but not bad at all (and after living here for almost two years, any Chinese place in Bloomington sounds good). Great Wall is where the local Republicans go for lunch, if you’re interested in making contacts (every time I went there for lunch, I saw the prosecutor).

Michaels Uptown Cafe
102 E Kirkwood Ave

The. Most. Pretentious. And. Overrated. Restaurant. In. Bloomington.

Opie Taylors
110 N Walnut St

A little sandwich place downtown on the square. Unremarkable, except that they have pretty good chili.

Runcible Spoon Cafe & Restaurant
412 E 6th st

The counter-cultural beatnik-y coffeehouse, full of intolerable excuses for human beings. I wouldn’t patronize this place if you paid me.

Shanti
221 E. Kirkwood ave

You want Indian? This is where you go. Pretty damned good.

Siam House
430 E. 4th St.

Sigh. This place opened to much fanfare back in the 90s, partly because the owner has an award-winning Cambodian restaurant in San Francisco. It was tremendous when it opened, and then the owner left town, and the quality rapidly declined. I have heard that she came back and whipped it back into shape, but I can’t swear to it. Once it got bad, we stopped going and never went back.

Snow Lion
113 S Grant st

As you may or may not know, the Dalai Lama’s brother lives in Bloomington (which has one of the largest Tibetan populations in the United States), and opened this restaurant. The fascinated-with-all-things-Tibetan hippie types love this place. For the moment, let’s forget that Tibetan food is the blandest, most boring food mankind has ever produced. The first of the two times I went there, right after it opened, the waiter–one of those hippie types–didn’t understand why I objected to a dead fly floating in my water. Need I say more? The restaurant is as dirty as its clientèle. The second time, the food was just as abysmal, and the restaurant (and waiter) just as filthy. Authentic, no doubt.

Trojan Horse
100 E Kirkwood ave

The successor to Zeus Gyros from the 70s. Pseudo-Greek, pretty good onion rings, and (no doubt because they don’t card too closely) a student hangout.

Wee Willie’s
1724 S Walnut St

Now that Ladyman’s is gone, this is the place to go for traditional. Great biscuits and gravy, great pies, great food all around (and when it’s on the menu, the beef manhattan is to die for).

In 1957, Ted Ladyman opened Ladyman’s Cafe at 122 East Kirkwood in Bloomington, Indiana. Ladyman’s was an old-fashioned diner, and the homemade pies had no equal anywhere in Monroe County. In the 70s and 80s, Ladyman’s was an institution, somewhere every undergraduate was told about. Ladyman’s even has a wikipedia entry. Over the decades, Ladyman’s never changed. It was staffed by local waitresses in old-fashioned aproned uniforms who addressed patrons as “sweetheart” and “honey.” The only thing about the menu that changed was the pricing. Here’s a menu from October, 1957–and the food was great:

• Fried Chicken Giblets with Cream Gravy .85
• Roast Sirloin of Beef with Brown Gravy .95
• Home Made Ham Loaf with Mustard Sauce .85
• Roast Pork with Brown Gravy .95
• Oven Browned Beef Hash .75
• Home Made Bean Soup .25
• Home Made Pie .15
• Pie A*La*Mode .20
• Vegetable Plate (Choice of Three) .60
• Fresh Strawberry Tarts With Whipped Cream .30

On December 12, 2006, Ladyman’s closed for business. Here is a picture of Ladyman’s on their last day open:

Here is a picture of Kirkwood taken from the edge of campus (at the Sample Gates) looking toward the square downtown. Ladyman’s was at the far end, on the left.

There were a couple of incidents that sped the demise of this once-great local institution, but the process began in the 90s. Perhaps I should say that we started to notice during the 90s that business was falling off there. We also began to encounter a new phenomenon: People who had never heard of Ladyman’s, or thought maybe they had heard of it, but had never eaten there.

What was going on? It’s always a mystery, and as much as I’d like to blame the highly overrated though popular Uptown Cafe (a very unpleasant place to eat, by the way, unless you like EXTREMELY LOUD ALL THE TIME SO YOU CAN’T HEAR YOURSELF THINK MUCH LESS EAT dining, not to mention mediocre-at-best food at ridiculous prices, or Bloomington’s most annoying, most pretentious crowd), I can’t. The Trojan Horse opened long before Michael’s, and like it, on the same block as Ladyman’s, and did not cut into their business. So for whatever reason, Ladyman’s was in decline through the 90s.

Then in 2000, the Bloomington City Council decided to tear up Kirkwood to work on the storm sewer. That in itself is commendable, if destructive to the businesses along the street, but the Bloomington City Council being idiots, elected by university idiots, felt it necessary to prolong the damage to businesses by using the opportunity to further narrow the street by putting in exactly what Bloomington does not need: More trees! Bloomington has so damned many trees that if you cut down every other one, nobody would notice a single tree was gone. Bloomington has so damned many trees that in thirty years, I never had even a tiny spot of full sun. Bloomington has so damned many trees that instead of the Tree City they should call it the Hosta City, because that’s one of the few things you can grow.

And it’s not like they’d never done this before. For all you locals here, Bloomington’s equivalent of Atherton, the main artery through town, is two parallel, one-way streets, Walnut and College, which converge into one street at both the north and south ends of town. The south side of town, along South Walnut, was one of the large business districts in town. No more. Why?

Because the Bloomington City Council decided to tear up the street–for well over a year–on both sides. Nobody could pull into, much less park at, the businesses. Guess what happened to them?

They went bankrupt. Kaput. Out of business. But the Bloomington City Council idiots were too stupid to learn from their past mistakes–that, or they didn’t care that they’d put businesses out of business. So they turned around and did it again to Kirkwood.

The real travesty here, however, is that what was once Ladyman’s is (from what my contacts back in Bloomington have told me) being turned into a hoity-toity museum for student art. Can’t you see it now? What’ll you be havin today, sweetheart? The Piss Christ? Or how about the BVM slathered in a cow dung reduction?

Shameful.

At least there’s still Wee Willie’s. I hope, anyway.

You’d think, would you not, that journalists-in-training would be inclined to, well, so what journalists are supposed to do when listening to a presentation, take notes so they can report? And you’d think that these journalists-in-training, who in a couple of years will be publishing classified material in the NYT then screaming “Freedom of the Press! Free Speech!” when ordered to reveal their sources, would have some basic respect for the right of others to speak, yes?

Well, you’re wrong:

According to the Harvard Crimson, four students were arrested for heckling FBI Direct Robert Mueller during his speech there.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, two of the hecklers were editors for the school’s newspaper, the Crimson.

Some of the idiocy they spewed:

“Freedom for political prisoners!” the protestor shouted. “Justice for Herman Bell!”

and:

“We will never forget the role of the FBI in McCarthyism!” screamed Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky ’07, who is also a Crimson editorial editor.

and my personal favorite, for its sheer mindless stupidity, and complete lack of familiarity with the Constitution of the United States:

stop the unconstitutional repression of the environment

Savor that one. Roll it over on your tongue. Consider the drooling, mouthbreathing stupidity required to utter it with a straight face.

The real zinger is where this happened, and what university’s paper these morons represent. If I say “Ivy League,” what is the first thing that comes to mind?

That’s right. Harvard. It doesn’t say much for the quality of education there that their “best and brightest” are blithering idiots, does it?

“It began to dawn on her that he had devised this treatment in order to have sex with her on his terms.”

Note that it took nine months before she figured this out.

The Left’s love of disaster.

University Diaries has an intriguing article up about Joel Wingard, an English professor at Moravian. He is one of “these people”:

In my classes, I try to establish and maintain a student-centered classroom, a place where students’ learning takes precedence over teacher’s teaching. By ’students’ learning’ I mean their guided self-discovery; by ‘teacher’s teaching’ I mean lecturing, testing, conferring judgment and other forms of authoritarian practice. My philosophy holds that self-motivated, self-directed learning is best, is ‘liberal learning’ in its best sense of liberating; that in the largest sense the most valuable “lesson” students may learn from literary study is not content but method, not information but process.

Yet, he has dismal reviews on ratemyprofessor.com (1-5 scale):

Average Easiness: 2.7
Average Helpfulness: 1.1
Average Clarity: 1.0
Hottness Total: 0
Overall Quality: 1.1

This guy needs serious help.

I never though that other classes have noticed his tongue thing, but it makes sense. He goes off on these insane rants that have nothing to do with what we’re talking about. And he sends out emails with words like “prolly” and “yall.” It’s pretty bad.

I hate this man. He’s a large portion of the reason that I left Moravian. They ought to fire him - he’s just simply the worst professor I have ever had the misfortune of working with.

Wingard was the worst professor I had at Moravian. He neglected aspects of journalism that were not part of his interests, i.e. sports.
Negative attitude towards some of his students and just an all-around jerk.

Worst. Teaching style. Ever. STOP STICKING YOUR TONGUE OUT, DUDE, AND GIVE US SOME REAL ASSIGNMENTS.

It’s too bad this is the writing advisor, because he ruins the experience for so many kids.

Now this is interesting. As you know if you’ve read any of my education articles, I’m the furthest thing from touchy-feely there is. I never accept late assignments. I never make exceptions for students. I treat every student exactly the same way in all circumstances. I maintain a professional distance and don’t try to be my students’ friend, but I treat my students respectfully, and as adults. I’m willing to bet (though I don’t know), just because Wingard is an English prof, that my grade curve is lower than his.

Given that, you’d think I’d get lower evaluations on ratemyprofessor.com, wouldn’t you? Well, guess again:

Average Easiness: 3.2
Average Helpfulness: 4.1
Average Clarity: 4.4
Hottness Total: 0 [Thank god for that!]
Overall Quality: 4.2

I’m graduating this year and XXXX is the best teacher I’ve had at the university. He’s amazing, and as bad as X is, that’s saying a lot. He’s the best. TAKE HIS CLASS!

Had him for both, and this is the guy you want for these classes. He knows his stuff, he wants his students to succeed, and he’s a really great teacher. GET THIS GUY!

Awesome guy.

Explains things clear, lots of energy, helps you out, shows you the easy way

Great teacher. Sometimes not the clearest, but just ask questions. Ask him about computer security, he loves it.

Energenic! Knows his information.

XXXX is great!

The conventional wisdom among university faculty (well, those who get lousy student evaluations) is that the only way to get good evaluations is to suck up to your students, hand out As like candy, run a “student-centered” classroom, and make an idiot out of yourself trying to act hip–like this Wingard fool. Yet, here I am, in at least dress pants, a sportcoat, and a shirt and tie, if not a suit, repeatedly saying “no” to students who want to reschedule exams or turn in projects late, giving not a single point of participation or any other subjective criterion–and I get significantly higher reviews than he does.

Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that students aren’t as stupid as faculty think, and don’t fall for any of that “student-centered classroom” nonsense? Could it be that they laugh at his pathetic attempts to be hip and cool? And could it be that university faculty who maintain that popular myth about student evaluations (above) get bad evaluations because they’re bad teachers?

And here’s another difference between us. I never take politics into the classroom. Never. But this idiot, well, he’s an English professor, so of course he does, and apparently, makes an ass of himself:

‘A Moravian College professor issued two campuswide apologies for an e-mail he wrote the day after the Virginia Tech killings that said he was going to “go out and buy a gun” and “some ammo” to “prevent more Blacksburgs, more Columbines.”

“Why, if I see anyone looking threatening, Asian, wearing black — I’m going to shoot that sucker first and ask questions later,” English professor Joel Wingard wrote in an e-mail exchange Tuesday that was circulated on the college computer network. “I’m going to drop into my shooter’s stance, one knee on the ground, gun hand supported by the other hand braced by the other knee, and do what has to be done.”

What an idiot. No wonder his students hate him.

The next time you hear gun control proponents claim that you’re paranoid, point them to this:

Now, how would one disarm the American population? First of all, federal or state laws would need to make it a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine and one year in prison per weapon to possess a firearm. The population would then be given three months to turn in their guns, without penalty.

Hunters would be able to deposit their hunting weapons in a centrally located arsenal, heavily guarded, from which they would be able to withdraw them each hunting season upon presentation of a valid hunting license. The weapons would be required to be redeposited at the end of the season on pain of arrest. When hunters submit a request for their weapons, federal, state, and local checks would be made to establish that they had not been convicted of a violent crime since the last time they withdrew their weapons. In the process, arsenal staff would take at least a quick look at each hunter to try to affirm that he was not obviously unhinged.

It would have to be the case that the term “hunting weapon” did not include anti-tank ordnance, assault weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, or other weapons of war.

All antique or interesting non-hunting weapons would be required to be delivered to a local or regional museum, also to be under strict 24-hour-a-day guard. There they would be on display, if the owner desired, as part of an interesting exhibit of antique American weapons, as family heirlooms from proud wars past or as part of collections.

Gun dealers could continue their work, selling hunting and antique firearms. They would be required to maintain very tight inventories. Any gun sold would be delivered immediately by the dealer to the nearest arsenal or the museum, not to the buyer.

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for “carrying.”

And there we have it. Not only total disarmament, but setting up a police state. What’s that word that begins with “f” and has an “s” and a “c” in it liberals love to scream all the time?

I made these lemon bars yesterday. They’re very good, but they could be better. The “crust” is a bit too much like a big sugar cookie, and the lemon goo on top could be a bit more lemon-y (I’m very picky about the balance between “sweet” and lemon–when it comes to lemon pie, I pretty much only like my grandmother’s, and all the rest are too sweet. And key lime pie is an abomination, way too sweet, and get rid of that nasty graham cracker crust.) So next time, I may try this for the crust (adapted from a lemon cookie recipe):

2 c. flour
1 c. powdered sugar
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. lemon juice
1 T. lemon zest

and cut the sugar a bit in the filling. But the texture is great. There’s a very delicate, thin crust on top of the goo, and it’s liquid in the middle–but the amount is perfect, so it doesn’t ooze out all over the place.

And for dinner? Gong bao ji ding, AKA kung pao chicken–though with a couple of adaptations. The recipe calls for a bombay onion, and I substitute a small red onion, but I usually also add a red bell pepper, and I have neither, so I’m using a medium sweet onion.

Gong Bao Ji Ding

1 lb chicken
12 dried chili peppers
1 small red onion
1/4 c. peanuts or cashews
3 cloves garlic
3 thin slices ginger
2 c. oil

Marinade:
1/2 tsp salt
1 T. sherry
1 egg white – lightly beaten
1 T. cornstarch

Seasoning:
1 T. each: sherry and black vinegar
1 1/2 T. dark soy sauce
1 T. sugar
1/2 t. salt

Cut the chicken into bite-sized cubes and marinate with the marinating ingredients. Tear the chilis into pieces, then soak them in hot water for 30 minutes. Drain. Peel the red onion. Cut it in half through the middle, then cut each half in fourths. Pull apart the sections. If you’re using a bell pepper as I do, seed and chop it here and put it on the plate with the onion. Mix the chicken pieces with the egg white. Add in the cornstarch and mix thoroughly. Let sit at least an hour at room temperature. Mix the seasoning ingredients together in a small bowl.

Add the 2 c. oil to a wok and heat until the oil is 450. Add the chicken all at once, stir quickly to separate, then let cook for about a minute. Stir and flip until chicken is done. Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon and drain all but about 2 T. of the oil.

Add the garlic and ginger to the oil, stir for 15 seconds, then add the chilis and stir for a minute or two. Add the onions and continue to stir and flip for another minute. Add the chicken, peanuts, and seasoning and cook for a minute. Serve.

Don’t hold your breath.

“All 8 Dems Take Private Jets To Debate”

I guess it’s okay, as long as they bought carbon offsets, and only use one sheet of TP per visit.

Mstislav Rostropovich has passed away. Story here. Tribute here. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Jules channels Ace with March of the Morons.

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“Your life. Can change. Within the twinkling. Of. Uh. Eye.”

And they’re advertising the hell out of it. Again.

Just an observation I sent some friends who all feed their pets ultra-chic petfood, and are now freaking out because of that melamine recall.

I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes or anything, but you have noticed, have you not, that all of the recalled pet food brands are chi-chi, pinkie-up, free-range, bistro, nouvelle cuisine, “we use only ORGANIC rice!” DESIGNER petfood, specifically targeted to people who really think dogs have a sophisticated palate? And you have noticed, have you not, that Purina isn’t recalling their petfood? Well, let’s check and make sure.

Okay, just checked. Purina Dog Chow not recalled. Another reason to stick with the company that’s been feeding our animals for over a hundred years, instead of feeding little Foo-Foo her Pretty Pooch Brand Fusion Cuisine Sushi in a cut crystal bowl.

Not that they’ll pay any attention. They’re far, far, far too into that whole bistro pooch thing. But after a great deal of yowling and whining, I just couldn’t resist. I mean, ferchrissake, they’re DOGS people. They’ll eat anything. Dogs are like that.

Tomorrow. The eyes aren’t getting better.

As you may or may not know, the NRA has remained silent on the Virginia Tech massacre, until today Offered in its entirety from the NRA Blog:

It’s been more than a week now since a mass murderer struck on the campus of Virginia Tech, and as the NRA joins the debate on policies and laws, there are a few things I want to point out.

It wasn’t 24 hours after the horrific shootings that the politicians started flapping their lips. Congressman Jim Moran suggested that somehow the tragedy was the fault of Republicans and President Bush. Barack Obama compared the evil events in Blacksburg to outsourcing jobs overseas. Senator Dianne Feinstein called for a new dialogue on gun control. Mayor Bloomberg spoke of the events in Blacksburg as he pushed to stop the Tiahrt Amendment from being renewed. And that’s just the politicians.

Gun control advocates had a field day. Within hours, the Brady Campaign had a “Donate Now!” button on their website. The Violence Policy Center was blaming “lax gun laws” in Virginia for the murders, instead of placing the blame on the madman. John Rosenthal, head of Stop Handgun Violence in Massachusetts, even suggested that the gun laws in that state make it less likely for mass murder to occur there.

While this was going on, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine made a statement that seemed to fall mostly on deaf ears. He said, “People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it, you know, their political hobby horse to ride, I’ve got nothing but loathing for them. To those who want to, you know, try to make this into some little crusade, you know, I say take that elsewhere. Let this community deal with grieving individuals and be sensitive to those needs.”

I absolutely agree with that statement. We’ve been debating gun control in this country for decades now. What does it hurt to pause for a few days in the midst of a tragedy to let the families of the victims grieve in peace, without being turned into a poster child either for gun rights or gun control? The answer, frankly, is it doesn’t hurt anyone. Sure, you might not get to appear on national television to promote your agenda, but there’s a time and a place for that. Even the brightest television studio lights can’t hide the fact that you’re standing in the shadow of an enormous tragedy in order to further your cause.

There is a time and a place for the discussion, the debate, and even the argument over gun control. I believe there is a time to resume this conversation. That is not hours after an event like this takes place. I wish my opponents felt the same way.

Serious eye trouble. See everybody tomorrow.

It’s just a triple decker sandwich of spiced stupid with stupid cheese smothered in stupid-sauce on whole stupid bread with a side of stupid-fries and stupid a la mode for dessert.

Read the whole thing.

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From Moonbattery (the story’s pretty funny too):

Moonbats oppose genetically engineered crops, possibly because the crops alleviate hunger in the Third World, thus depriving children in quaint multicultural villages of their picturesque potbellies.

and flour, and butter, and eggs, and powdered sugar . . . so why aren’t I making these?

Lemon Bars

1 c. butter
2 c. flour
1/2 c. powdered sugar
4 beaten eggs
2 c. sugar
4 tablespoons flour
1/4 c. lemon juice
1 T. finely grated lemon peel
sifted confectioners’ sugar

Preheat oven to 325.

Blend butter, 2 cups flour and 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar. Pat into ungreased 13×9x2-inch pan. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes.

Blend together eggs, sugar, 4 tablespoons flour, lemon juice, and lemon peel. Pour over first layer. Return to oven and bake for 20 minutes. Loosen around edges, cut into bars and sift confectioners’ sugar over the top while warm.

No, not the show. Ninety years ago today, the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, was born in Newport News, Virginia. From the wikipedia entry:

Ella Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as Lady Ella and the First Lady of Song, is considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th Century.[1]

With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, near faultless phrasing and intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered to have been one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook.

Of her, people said:

“Man, woman or child, Ella is the greatest of them all.” - Bing Crosby

“I call her the High Priestess of Song.” - Mel Torme

“I didn’t realize our songs were so good until Ella sang them.” - Ira Gershwin

“She had a vocal range so wide you needed an elevator to go from the top to the bottom. There’s nobody to take her place.” - David Brinkley

“Her artistry brings to mind the words of the maestro, Mr. Toscanini, who said concerning singers, ‘Either you’re a good musician or you’re not.’ In terms of musicianship, Ella Fitzgerald was beyond category.” - Duke Ellington

“Play an Ella ballad with a cat in the room, and the animal will invariably go up to the speaker, lie down and purr.” - Geoffrey Fidelman (author of the Ella Fitzgerald biography, First Lady of Song)

Her official site is here. Her wikipedia entry is here. And here she is in 1979 singing St. Louis Blues:

And there’s a compendium of Ella (and similar) clips on YouTube.

I don’t know how I missed this piece about “intellectual” gobbledygook, but this is a gem–even for Jonah Goldberg. There are so many money quotes here, I don’t know where to start:

Who’s Homi Bhabha? Where’ve you been, buddy? Homi’s one of the hottest “post-colonial theorists” in the world — which is not unlike saying “the best Octoberfest in Orlando.”

Or:

Denis Dutton, the editor who launched the bad writing contest (and who launched the incalculably valuable site Arts & Letters Daily), summed it up nicely: “To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it.”

Or:

Today, the situation is reversed. Here in America — the very place the Homi Bhabhas and Judith Butlers denounce as “hegemonic” whatchamacallits and “enunciatory” thingamajigs — there are no totalitarian crimes. They do not exist. America is a lovely place. We are not “transferring populations” or anything of the sort.

In Orwell’s day, the fog of jargon was a smoke screen to conceal real horrors; today the jargon is just so much smoke, to hide the fact that there’s no fire. Read pretty much anything by Cornel West and you’ll find all sorts of euphemisms brimming with racial or anti-capitalist sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Or:

Today’s intellectual elite — the stars of Harvard and Berkeley — speak in such gibberish precisely because if they spoke plainly, clearing the smoke from their ideas, we’d learn that their views cover the spectrum from boringly unoriginal to sand-poundingly stupid.

Classic.

Dialectology has never been my thing, really, though I had to take courses that included it, and it’s interesting. Many people are surprised to discover that the United Kingdom has a great deal more dialectical variation than the United States, and that’s not counting immigrant populations. Here is a cool site. You can click on any of the “people” on the UK map and hear them speak.

“Normally, I’d have probably ignored this whole thing (which is not a new issue), but that phony Einstein quote set me off.”

The Carnival of Education is posted.

The first earth-like planet has been discovered. Hat tip to Ace.

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When you teach a high-enrollment, mandatory course to highly competitive, goal-oriented students, fairness is paramount. One student can cause a great deal of pain by going to the proper university office, and we all want to treat our students fairly. For those who teach smaller courses and have as few as 40 or so students, personal integrity and professionalism should be enough. In our case, it was not.

The course (actually, a two-semester course sequence, but the assessment is identical in both) is a mandatory data-analyis course. In the first semester course, enrollment averages 1700 in the fall semester and 1200 in the spring semester (because a student must get a C or better in the first semester course to take the second, enrollments in the second-semester course average 1200 and 800 for the fall and spring semesters, respectively). There are one fifty-minute lecture and two fifty-minute labs per week. Lectures are held in one of the several lecture halls, and average around 240 students per section. Labs are held in computer clusters, and range from 24-45 students per section, depending on the size of the computer cluster in which the lab section is held (do the math–that’s a lot of computer clusters across campus).

Because the course has such a large enrollment, and because so many lab sections must be taught, over half of the instructors are graduate students, nearly all of whom have no teaching experience, and no interest or investment in teaching. Also, since this is a university and not the real world, we–meaning those of us in charge of the two-semester sequence–have no control over which graduate students teach the class or whether they are allowed to continue to teach, no matter how poorly they perform (the university sees it as financial aid instead of employment). This presents a set of problems, the relevant ones here being how we control both the lack of teaching (assessment) experience and teacher (assessment) subjectivity.

Students are the ultimate control for fairness. Even in such a large course, when one instructor doesn’t cover something other instructors do, it not only gets around, but it gets back to us, usually within 24 hours, and often, sooner. If one instructor were grading a project one way and another were grading another way, or if one instructor bumped up Jeannie’s grade because he felt sorry for her, or if one student got credit for an answer while other students did not, students would be lined up in front of our offices to raise hell–and justifiably so. Subjectivity cannot be justified because it is inherently unfair, and autonomy does not protect the unfair, inconsistent assessment of students.

The solution was to develop a system of assessment that was wholly consistent and wholly fair. This is how we did that.

The assessment system is exclusively performance-based, and no criteria are subjective. Here is the grade breakdown for the class (1000 points possible):

Each written exam is 100 multiple-choice questions (five distractors), and is written to test abstract concepts covered in the lecture portion of the class, as well as the student’s ability to extract abstract information from a problem (as are the ten unannounced quizzes, each of which is five multiple-choice questions with five distractors). Anything covered in any of the materials for class is fair game for assessment. This seems to be a foreign concept to students, who believe for some reason that there is only a small subset of what the course covers that will appear on an exam. The questions most students miss are those taken from the reading assignments but not overtly covered in the lecture (in other words, students don’t do the assigned r