Buffy, an outraged dog, speaks ...

I read that story on the fussy admissions people at these New York City doggie camps. I am outraged (I learned this term from our occasional visitor, Rechtal Turgidley Jr).

 I am a dog of the orchards and the wind surfing/kite boarding beaches. True, I may have put a paw through a far-too-fragile sail. True, I may have had a good chew on a harness. But my heart goes out to those aggressive doggies who require more attention than the milquetoast types in that story. Shape up, New York! Expand your admissions like Dalton!


Even with my somewhat overactive personality, I have managed to win all of these merit badges at Cascade Pet Camp.


A Fair Shake For Dogs

Wil Slack '11, rings those bells for a special concert

It being Sunday and all, I thought a final look at Will Slack ringing those Thompson Bells might be a nice feature.

Williams.edu has this excellent story.

About the Carillonneur:
William Slack ’11, of Decatur, Georgia, began ringing in 2007. He has performed and arranged numerous songs for the bells, from hymns to pop music, in addition to original compositions. Will also plays the piano, trombone, and djimbe, and has sung with the Williams Chamber and Concert Choirs under Brad Wells.

In addition, the now-graduated Slack has been a frequent contributor to EphBlog. Of course, like many readers, there were times when he got completely fed up!

Well, who hasn't!  Inspite of this I am awaitng the return of that contentious blog.

Ed Note: I think this is a repeat of a story I did on Will when I had another blog, now lost in the blogosphere.

I am disappointed ... a lobster is not a fresh water crayfish ...

This just in from our New York City correpondant:

Zabars has been selling  a delicious salad for 15 years. However, the term "lobster" may have been used a trifle loosely.

Here's the story

And here is the repackaged product:

What would Noam Chomsky think: laziness or just an evolving use of language!

Who knows what's in tuna salad!

Dogs and Dalton: Admission policies?

Our own NYC correspondant points up an interesting contrast in standards for admission and asks the alliterative question "How would David define Dog Diversity? 

Doggy Kindergarden seems to continue on the  schedule set by preschool nurseries as a necessary for eventually getting into Princeton. The parents interview, the observation in a social setting. If these dogs could march they would be in the Knickerbocker Greys!

On the other hand, Dalton has had rapid growth in admittance of pupils from beyond the Upper East Side!

Dalton will dramatically exceed the citywide average for kindergarten diversity at New York's private schools, which was 30% students of color last year, according to data from the National Association of Independent Schools.

It's a milestone in an aggressive campaign by the admissions director, Elisabeth "Babby" Krents, to broaden the school's reach since she assumed the position in 1996. The previous year, the kindergarten class was 6% diverse. This year, it will be 47% of the 97-member incoming class."Years ago, I think primarily kids [at Dalton] were from the Upper East Side and homogenous in lots of ways," said Ms. Krents, who graduated from Dalton in 1968. "We sat down to say, 'Let's see what we can do to widen that a bit".

Hmmmm. Perhaps the disappeared David would present his views right here on E-in-E ...

Noam Chomsky on campus September 15, 7pm at Main Stage ...

"Tough love" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.
Noam Chomsky in Powers and Prospects, 1996 


One of the first luminaries to appear on campus this new school year will be Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy.His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.

This announcement on the Williams site:
NOAM CHOMSKY on GETTING IT RIGHT: DILEMMAS IN HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION
Noam Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at M.I.T. This talk is sponsored by the Class of ’71 Public Affairs Forum and is the first of a two-part dialogue on Humanitarian Intervention The event is free, but tickets are required. Book signing to follow. Tickets available online starting Sept. 1. More information to follow.
Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m., MainStage, ’62 Center
  
Chomsky is an integral part of two current courses:
       •  The Syntactic Structure of English, a linguistics class in which we tried to build rules of grammar      based on usage data, our own knowledge of the language, and the transformational grammar of Noam Chomsky.
       • Two American Public Intellectuals: Noam Chomsky and Edward Said , focusing on a few major issues on which Chomsky and Said shared deep concerns: ideologies within the academy and society at large, media representations, Palestinians and the Middle East, 9/11, U.S. global dominance, and the role of the intellectual in society.


Ed Note: Chomsky's work in the application of particular language to understood concepts was the basis for a course I took in Teaching English as a Second Language. It was interesting to see people with a variety of languages learning the English words for what they already understood. By the way, the basic discipline of teaching ESL is that you speak only in English. It was a hard-earned certificate!

At the Iowa Republican Caucus ...

Things get really hot and heavy behind closed doors

"Is it my imagination, or is it getting crowded in here?"


Make that three hardboiled eggs!



Update

Michele Bachmann wins Iowa presidential Straw Poll

Michele Bachmann said Barack Obama would be ''a one-term president''.

John Ormsbee '83 looks 'em over ...

and gives us his comparison of Forbes v USNews

We all love the college rankings, especially this year with Williams in its rightful place atop both the Forbes and US News lists.

Here are a few of my favorite things about them:

1.  Each list is the work product of basically a single person.  (Forbes: Richard Vedder;  US News: Robert Morse)

2.  Both lists can be created without ever needing to set foot upon any of the schools in the lists. (All the data are available on line, and most of it for free.)

3.  Both of the lists can be created without ever needing to actually attend college - 8th grade arithmetic is pretty much all you need.

4.  Each of the Rankings Experts thinks more highly of the schools he attended than does his competitor (one exception: Morse gives a higher percentile ranking to Vedder's grad school, U. of Illinois, than Vedder does.)  See below:

	Percentile Rankings
School (attendee)	Forbes      (Vedder)	US News      (Morse)	Degree	Major
Northwestern (Vedder)	97%	95%	B.A	Econ
U. of Cincinnati (Morse)	17%	40%	B.A	Econ
U. of Illinois (Vedder)	77%	82%	Ph.D	Econ
Michigan State (Morse)	46%	70%	MBA	Finance

5. The Forbes ranking includes data from www.ratemyprofessor.com, which allows students to evaluate, among other things, their professors' physical appearance. (Inexplicably, Forbes ignores the "hotness" data from this source, and IMHO is the poorer for it.)

6. The data collected, and the weighting formulae, change every year.  I take this to mean that each of the Rankings Experts believes all of his previous rankings were WRONG.

7.  Neither of the Rankings Experts is really qualified to say anything about Williams.  Why?  Couldn't get in.  -QED.

Beat Amherst!

Reader thoughts to dick@swart.org