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

The PC ... next at St Peter's Techy Gates?

"They’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT, and incandescent light bulbs,", says Mark Dean, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Middle East and Africa.
From his blog:


It’s amazing to me to think that August 12 marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM Personal Computer. The announcement helped launch a phenomenon that changed the way we work, play and communicate.  Little did we expect to create an industry that ultimately peaked at more than 300 million unit sales per year. I’m proud that I was one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first machine and was fortunate to have lead subsequent IBM PC designs through the 1980s... I, personally, have moved beyond the PC as well. My primary computer now is a tablet. 

How about you personally, who are perhaps reading this on some teeny-tiny device located on the head of a 4G pin stuck into your finger for easy viewing.

Just send me your thoughts however to my old pc here at the wrecking yard ... dick@swart.org

Yet another college rating report ...

You know you'll look! SPOILER  We are not #1, but we do beat Amherst.

The Best Colleges reviews publicly available data and then produces independent ranking assessments of colleges in various disciplines. Our goal is to produce resources that are useful to prospective students. We recognize that no ranking system is perfect, and for this reason we recommend that our ratings be used only as a general guide when choosing a quality school.

We do not accept paid placements for our school rankings as this would defeat our primary goal of creating resources that students find useful.

Yeah, this is why we don't accept advertising here on E-in-E. Can you imagine how I would plug that ad for the new Jag? Or that Viking stove? Or something bespoke in a fine worsted from Henry Poole? Or (lets face it), that dental care ad from WalMart!

You see the problem! Rest assured that what you read in EphBlog-in-Exile is untainted by commercialism or intelligence. This is our guarantee!

Ooops ...

More on Sarah Megan Thomas '01: writer, star, and finder of the money for the movie Backward

This story was rowing its' way into your heart a few days ago right here on E-in-E. Now the Bryn Mawr/Gladwyn Patch picks up the pace.

With one day of filming still left on “Backwards,” the indie drama she wrote, produced, and co-stars in, Haverford native Sarah Megan Thomas is already looking ahead to what’s next.

“I would absolutely love to do this again,” the 1997 graduate of The Shipley School told Patch between scenes on a rainy day of filming Tuesday, in a rowhome along the Schuylkill.

To those of us who grew up in the area and remember when Jack Kelly was a bigger name than his little sister, this movie is hot stuff

2 GENTS presented by Williams College Summer Theatre Lab Friday, 19 August at 8pm.

The Albany Times-Union reports:

Kevin O'Rourke

2 GENTS is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA  developed and conceived by Kevin O’Rourke ’78, Jay Tarses ’61, and the 2011 Summer Theatre Lab company. 

This production will be directed by Lab Artistic Director Kevin O'Rourke '78 with set design by Becky Phillips ’06 and music supervision by Eric Kang ’09. The cast will feature Lee Ordeman ’85 and members of the undergraduate Lab company. 

Performances will be held in the CenterStage Theatre at 8pm.

And of course, you remember Jay Tarses:He is a recipient of the BiCentennial Medal in 1992 and the deliverer of these comments seen on the blog before: The difficulty of Matriculation


O heaven! Were man
But constant, he were perfect.
The Two Gentleman of Verona, 5. 4

Search continues for Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art ...

The Berkshire Eagle has a story on the search for three area museum directors, the Hancock Shaker Museum, the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, and the WCMA.

As a sidebar, Katy Kline, the WCMA Deputy Director is the daughter of Kermit Gordon whom many had for Econ 1-2

From the story :

"The search is proceeding as we had planned and hoped," said Will Dudley, provost at the college. "The search committee talked to many important stakeholders at the museum to understand what we're looking for. A job description was put together and prospects  are being identified from around the world." According to Dudley, the museum is "really special, a first-rate t eaching museum that contributes to the education of Williams College  students and the community. It has a long history of local and traveling exhibitions, so we're looking for someone who can carry  on those traditions."

Mac beats Mobil: Can we run cars on zeros and ones?

This story in the Financial Times.

Apple

 briefly passed ExxonMobil to become the most valuable company in the world by market capitalisation on Tuesday, 14 years after a brush with bankruptcy.

Apple sank back below the oil group before the close of New York trading on Tuesday but if it continues its upward trajectory on Wednesday, it could end Exxon’s six-year dominance.

All I know is I just installed Mac 10.7 Lion and it is a disaster. All features and no benefits. 

Williams Art Mafioso Keith Wilson '78 on PBS with reconstructing looted Chinese temples through digital technology ...

Keith Wilson '78, Associate Director and Curator of Ancient Chinese Art at the Smithsonians' Freer and Sackler Galleries  in Washington, DC, appeared last evening on the PBS Evening News discussing the use of digital technology in reconstructing looted Chinese cave temples.


Wilson has employed scanning techniques that enable identification of objects now scattered in museums around the world to be matched to their originsl locations in the caves and in many cases to be placed together with other groupings that had been separated.

The show is a digital projection of the caves as they may have appeared to the original worshippers.


The show will be coming to Dallas and San Diego.

Relief for Frustrated Ephs: only $900 ... and a contest!

Feeling frustrated? Want to unleash those feelings of anger over the economy, congress, and paying to see Green Lantern?


Take a tip from Lucy Nobbe of Kirkland MO as reported in this story from KSDK

Lucy Nobbe , a Kirkwood MO financial broker is so fed up with what's going on in Washington and on Wall Street, she decided to send a message, by plane.The banner Ms Nobbe paid to have made and flown over lower Manhattan today reads, "Thanks for the downgrade, you should all be fired."

Nobbe says she was so angry about the way lawmakers argued and bickered over the debt ceiling, that she couldn't get it out of her head.The single mom and financial broker says she was woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday with an idea to send a plane flying around Washington, DC with her message to lawmakers. But there was a slight hiccup: there's a no fly zone around DC, so she settled on New York instead.

Nobbe says it cost her just under $900 to fly the plane around New York, but the company she used, flysigns.com, was so impressed with what she did they gave her a discount.


A CONTEST A CONTEST A CONTEST A CONTEST
Submit your banner message, the one that really expresses all that rage that is giving you heartburn and making your arm break out!
email me at dick@swart.org with your towable rant!  Prizes will be awarded!

ENTER  ENTER  ENTER  ENTER  ENTER

From Jeff Z : Sarah Megan Thomas '01 and a movie about the sacrifice of crew competition

Jeff points to this story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the making of the movie Backwards. 

The film is about a female rower and her struggle to make the Olympics The script is written by Sarah Megan Thomas who also plays the lead. Thomas herself was a star athlete in prep school and at Williams.

From the article:

Thomas Eakins
The Pair Oared Shell

The seed of the movie was planted when Thomas was a student at Williams College. Her rowing mentor, a fellow student a year older, left school to train for the 2000 Summer Olympics. After countless hours of work and practice, she literally just missed the boat;she was named first alternate. "That must suck. No one talks about how that must feel, to get that far, to be so close, " Thomas says, "The story has never been told about all the sacrifice required to compete at that level, the things you miss, the life that gets left behind."

And now it has been.

Thomas describes Backwards as "a sports romance" that focuses on women athletes, a riverine version of Bend It Like Beckham, with oars instead of soccer balls.

For old Philadelphians, the action centers on Boat House Row, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Haverford College, and Flannigans Boat House in Wayne.

Congratulations, Sarah Megan Thomas!
http://backwardsthemovie.com/

An Old Guy goes to his 55th Reunion ...

As threatened, some afterthoughts on the reunion.

Weather: hot and sunny, then an horrendous deluge, then a good day but parade cancelled. I'd call the weather mixed.

In the olden days reunion just used to be literally the "Old Boys", and the numbers were smaller because classes were half the size.

But 30-some old guys did show up for the '56ers 55th. Our 50th had been 120 (≠60%). There were offers of activities galore. Without taking anything at all from the importance and super job done by the school on graduation. the reunion classes are a nice windfall for a four-day weekend: the 25th donated $13 mil,the 50th an astounding $22 mil as class gifts. Thus the attention to services, tents, bands, great food, and plenty of alcohol.

Our class HQ was in the old-guys quad, call it "The Old Guard": the four white frame houses that run along either side of the drive to the Old Williams Inn ... now Dodd House. Only two of us stayed in house, Hugh Deane and me. Both without wives' present. The class dinners were in Dodd, The Faculty Club, and the new Williams Inn where the Kap house used to be until it burned. Need I mention that coat and neckties were the prevailing wear? With cocktails partaken prior, wine with, and even among some of us (well, ok ... me) a post digestive to ease into evening.

Reunion is a tableaux of time and its passing: there are plenty of children in tow with parents in the younger classes, and in the very older classes, the reverse, parents in the tow of children and even grandchildren. The Class of '41 had seven members present, some with the loving help of offspring.

A shimmer of camaraderie falls over the older classes as the striving for a life position in the 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25th years gives way to something a great deal more valuable as age stills the need for competition. The enjoyment of each other sets in. This feeling is palpable among the older set. And remember, no female alums until the end of the 60's-early 70's. So I am describing an aged alpha-pride.

Short takes:

1.  I rented a car in Boston from Enterprise using my ultra exclusive Costco membership. They both pick you up and drop you off ... a great service. I was at daughter Wendy's. I rented, for one person, the next to the cheapest model. I can't do the Ford Aspire. And through my much-sought after Costco card, was given an upgrade. I ended up with this: an eight passenger TV-aided Toyota Sienna. My contribution to reunion was to raise the college CO2 footprint. Quite comfortable, though. I ignored calculating the milage.

2. MassMOCA for the Sol Lewitt show! Absolutely amazing. I think it is up for the next twenty years. Three floors of virtually all the designs and in chronological order. http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=27

Just the thought of the hours needed with the painstaking individual instructions to be followed. I dropped a note to Darra Goldstein after sending another sub to Gastronomica to another daughter in law, that an interesting compare and contrast would be Lewitt and Julia Childs, since they are both artists yet leaving instructions for the creation of the piece since neither will be there.

3. At the Clark!

a. Spaces. Photographs by Candida Hofer and Thomas Struth

"The large-scale photographs by Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth featured in this exhibition offer distinct but connected perspectives on the ways individuals interact with the spaces they inhabit". 

Gigantic knock-your-eyes-out C prints! Hofer shows the power of space without people. Stroth shows the complexity of interrelations in space when people are added. I later saw two Struths at Boston in a show of photo holdings of the BofA. But the point of each is stronger in the combination. Great curating!

     b. The Pissaro's People show.  All old farts admitted free the day before the show opened.

The concentration on the people in the paintings and their relationship to Pissaro and his political leanings gives the viewer a totally new insight into Pissaro. Another outstanding piece of scholarship.

4. Gordon Clapp '71 in a one-acter about Frost

 Three of us '56ers, all married, sitting together discover we have had nine wives between us.

And so it goes ...