Jon's Notes
One Last Week
Well, this is it. The last week of classes. Finals week it next week.
I hope that I can pull everything together before then.
I must make several hard choices over this Christmas break. Not the least of which is the path I should take to reach my educational goals.
This particular path is turning out to be costing a bit more than I can afford. So either I find a way to make more money, or I find a different path.
This whole experience is teaching me quite a bit about myself that I would not have otherwise learned. There are still quite a few lessons for me to learn. Among which are the
now habit and the
save it habit.
Another choice is method of funding. The path of the
Guru or that of the
Grunt. Plus there figuring out which is the best path to the
puzzle palace. Do I even want to work in a black hole? Will they even consider hiring me?
One Last Note
This image from
ESRI provides a good illustration to go with my previous post. It looks like there is a tipping point somewhere concerning city population and propensity to collective insanity. I note this because I actually like medium-sized cities.
It is nice to able to walk somewhere other than nowhere.
Off on a semi-related tangent… I find talk of abolishing the electoral college to be quite
capitalistic, which is odd considering the usual source of such talk. You see, the electoral college provides for
fair and equitable distribution of political capital. The usual suspects have been whining that the electoral college system is “unfair.” I'd like to note that the original purpose of the electoral college was to ensure representation for states with comparatively small populations. It is working exactly as designed in this regard. So, fair and equitable distribution of my money is okay, but fair and equitable distribution of representation among the states is not? This seems like a double standard. There is not that big of a difference between political capital and plain vanilla capital.
Considering Chicago; I wonder how many times my late great-grandfather's name appeared on a Illinois ballot…
Final Comment
Here is my final though on this past election:
The majority is still sane. Hope remains.
The way I see it, riots are a sign of collective insanity. Riots only happen in cities, therefore residents of cities are collectively insane. Residents of cities are also collectively leftist Democrats. That explains everything.
Here's to poking leftist psyche and corrupt politicians!
Actually, I should just shut up and go code.
A Cost Cut too Far
Some of the methods for cost cutting at Concordia University Wisconsin have me concerned.
The methods in particular are reducing church-work grants and increasing the number of adjunct professors.
There are really only two reasons anyone attends CUW. The first is if the student is seeking employment with LCMS in a educational or ministerial role. The second is for the environment/worldview. The cost/value of education ratio is not favorable if you ignore those two reasons.
Cutting grants to people involved in the primary purpose (see their mission statement) of CUW is disgraceful.
One of the selling points for Concordia was that you would be able to randomly drop in on faculty to ask them questions. This is true for the most part and I take advantage of it nearly every week. Increasing the percentage of adjunct profs to 25% will decrease the chanced that students will be able to get timely answers from faculty.
Flu Vaccine
What is the big deal with there being a shortage of flu vaccine? Supposedly there is enough vaccine for "high-risk groups," but not for normal people. You would think from all the chatter that the flu was as bad as ebola and that an epidemic was sweeping the nation. I have to wonder why normal people need a vaccine for something as commonplace as the flu.
Going off the deep end... I wonder if the flu vaccine shortage was played up by the mainstream media in an attempt to drag down President Bush's reelection campaign. If so, how much worry are they willing to cause in the general populace in an attempt to achieve their ends?
I'll shut up now that I've contributed my two cents to the recent paranoia towards the mainstream media.
Not that bad
Saying that
it could be worse is being a little too negative. Being optimistic, most of my problems with President Bush's administration will go away if Mr. Ashcroft's resignation brings some sanity to the DoJ.
Stunts
like this have got to stop. Using treaties to evade checks and balances is a dangerous activity, yet one that the current administration seems to be doing with greater frequency. I'm hoping that changing the Attorney General will bring an end to such activity.
On the other hand, perhaps the Federal Government has been playing this game all along. Pres. Clinton seemed to get away with oppression without hiding behind treaties. But then, I seem to recall the Republicans raising a stink over quite a few of the treaties that Pres. Clinton wanted ratified.
I should probably take a moment to comment on Indymedia since I linked to them earlier in this post. I disagree with over 95% of the views routinely expressed on Indymedia. I read them to get the pulse of the irrational, and often violent, far left. I often see comments on Indymedia which seem to advocate violence against those who disagree with the prevailing leftist ideals. Their ilk have been known to engage in terrorist acts, remember the
weather underground? To that end, I think that it is prudent to keep an eye on them. That said, it would be good to keep in mind that breaking the precepts of justice in the pursuit of justice is not justice. There is no crime so heinous that it cannot be handled within due process of law in this land.
It could be worse
Well, it looks like President Bush won the election. I suppose Senator Kerry would have been worse. I'm just glad that I can concentrate on worrying about legislation now that the presidential election is over.
I
am rather disappointed at some comments by a classmate of the football playing variety. He was saying that he hoped that the terrorists or somebody would take out President Bush. God forbid!
What is with some people? Why do (gross generalization) city people, especially minorities, hate Bush? What did he ever do to them? I suspicious that it has more to do with what he
did not do for them. Do they really depend that much on nanny statism and sugar-daddy economics? I fear that the divide will only get larger as time passes.
