Comments for The Ticker

Comment on Legislator Relents, Won’t Ask U. of Iowa to Sell Its Pollock Painting by R117532

R117532 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:50:00 +0000

As with your first post, I learn from you and agree with (what might be) your generalization that we are paying attention to insubstantial labels and not material facts when considering individual and social food production. As an example, too many people fail to notice that mother nature is busily creating GM products every day and the human practice predates Mendel. This said, you seem to label yourself a conservative in reaction to the annoying dispositions of some extreme liberals. Extremists on all sides tend to have an incomplete grasp of the facts and may fail to reason from the largest principles. My point was that your arguments are not in any way conservative — unless someone wants to make the case that objectivity in selecting and assessing the merit of relevant facts is conservative. Only your self-ascriptions suggests conservatism.

On a more practical note, I personally know several small organic farmers and ranchers in our community. Most of them sell from facilities set up on their land. While I don’t follow them around 24/7 to see if they “cheat,” knowing their character and passion, I trust them. Yes, the prices are enough higher that one has to make an informed risk/benefit decision, and I often favor of the local supermarket. Nonetheless, in the communities with which I am familiar, organic is a viable choice if you are not poor or if you raise your own food. I think your comments go more to organic agribusiness. Even there, a smart business recognizes that honesty is not only a good personal policy but is sometimes the least expensive business practice. If there is good evidence that reputable organic farmers are cheating, we should be discussing that. Moreover, even if, say, 15% of them are cheating, if follows that those who buy organic have reduced their exposure by the reciprocal.

Keep dishing up the relevant facts that point to the bad reasoning common in this area. Nothing conservative about that.

Comment on Senator Durbin Seeks Investigation of Westwood Campuses’ Use of GI Bill Benefits by momiss

momiss — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:43:00 +0000

I am not interesting in defending the NCAA, however, some questions do come to mind. How would paying football players affect Title IX requirements for supporting women’s athletics? Also, along the same line, would paying athletes from revenue-generating programs such as football and basketball undercut an athletic department’s ability to maintain other men’s programs that are revenue losers? Additionally, what about the compensation that allows an athlete to go to college and get a degree? These full-ride scholarships are expensive even if the academic opportunity is too often squandered. Isn’t the real scandal the football programs with low graduation rates? My last questions concern compensation. Do stars or first-string players get more than second and third-string players? How do you compensate scholarship athletes versus walk-on students and student trainers? How much should athletes be paid? Is the two thousand dollars per year proposed by the NCAA fair? What happens if a coach pulls this scholarship, and compensation, unfairly? What is the legal process involving labor rights on this? This looks like a big mess.

Comment on Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case Over Sports Cuts at James Madison U. by tgroleau

tgroleau — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:37:00 +0000

I spent a lot of time thinking about this before I went to an e-text for my statistics class. I still have books from my undergraduate (early 80s) and graduate (early 90s) work so I was inclined to think that my students should have the same ability to keep the book for reference.

However, in 20 years of teaching statistics I’ve had only one student ever tell me that they actually used the book as a reference after the class was over. Most of my students sold the book back as fast as they can – sometimes even before the final exam.

Furthermore, the practice of statistics is changing quickly with technology and new resources are constantly appearing on the web and in new books. For practical application, I’m not sure the text would be all that useful after five years or so.

Therefore, starting last year, I gave in to e-texts. I encourage my students to bring their computers to class and if I want to refer to part of text in class, I can project it in front of the room. I encourage those who want a physical book to go find it used on the web.

As far as I can tell, the e-text move hasn’t made any difference one way or another in my students’ learning.

Oddly, many of them don’t like the e-text approach. The e-text costs $90 and expires shortly after the semester. But they prefer to pay $200 for a physical book so that they can get $50 back at the end of the semester. In their mind, getting $50 back at the end of the term somehow overrides the $150 versus $90 net cost. My theory is that mom & dad pay for the books but the student pockets the $50. Under that system, the net cost doesn’t matter.

Comment on Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case Over Sports Cuts at James Madison U. by mdporcaro

mdporcaro — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:34:00 +0000

In this particular pilot Courseload does allow copy and paste (just tried it; you made me curious!). It isn’t the case in all etexts, of course, but unless this is a fluke, it is possible.

Comment on 2 George Mason Economists Introduce Free Online Courses by matthew6

matthew6 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:23:00 +0000

Will GMU accept this course for credit?

Comment on UC-Davis’s Dean of Agriculture Resigns, Citing a Push From the Chancellor by robertkase51

robertkase51 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 16:20:00 +0000

Do Deans have a length of terms of employment? Unless the Dean announced his retirement this sounds like he is being pushed out.

Comment on Morris Brown College Has Not Paid Employees in Months, Records Show by dsmith79

dsmith79 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:47:00 +0000

Two reasons for Morris-Brown’s crisis and its $30 million debt are lack of financial restraint and accountability. It owes faculty and staff thousands of dollars? According to the Atlanta Constitution the director of recruitment and admissions, is owed $171,000; the chair of the business administration department, is due $163,000. “Vice president of student affairs is awaiting $142,000.” The student population is maybe less than 100? Why are these individuals making this type of salary when the student population has crashed and the school is in a free fall? The school owes the utility company millions of dollars.

Perhaps Morris-Brown needs to have ONE person as the VP of Student Affairs/Chair of the Business Department/director of admissions. Shutter all the buildings and have one building to serve the entire campus. The reality is that the climb out of this crisis will be slow going, if impossible. But having people working and owing them money for months neither is good financial restraint nor makes good sense. Either these people need to be laid off, volunteer their services, or work quarter-time. Working for months at a full salary, hoping to get paid; only adds to the debt and gives the outside world more reasons to believe the school should be permanently closed.

Comment on Legislator Relents, Won’t Ask U. of Iowa to Sell Its Pollock Painting by raymond_j_ritchie

raymond_j_ritchie — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:44:00 +0000

Yes – I am a conservative: from life experience as a first generation graduate. I have never gotten over how comical the 1970s student radicals at Sydney University were with their snotty private school accents, blathering about the revolution and what they were doing of behalf of the working class. It was just silly kids playing silly imaginings games. I do not recal them ever doing anything on my behalf: usually they expressed shock if I told them what highschool I came from. My father had been brought up in the Redfern slum. Telling them where my father was born positively horrified them. What a bunch of wankers! I recognise some of them in parliament today on both sides of the house. I know all about wankers and what a wank is when I see or hear it.
Actually I am quite sympathetic to someone who does not want to eat chickens fed antibiotics or vegetables that have been sprayed with pesticide. However, the only way to achieve this is to grow the stuff yourself. However, subsistence agriculture leaves little time for anything else. Visit Isarn.
What the 30% lower figure for “organic food” (hate the term) is telling you is that most of the food labelled “organic” is fraudulent no matter how rustic the guy at the Ithaca farmer’s market looks. You are paying for the label not the reality. Crooks know full well how hard it is to detect most pesticides and that is why they are so abused by both traditional and “organic” farmers. All you have is someone’s word that something is “organic” and the american experience of televangelists over the past few decades can give you some idea of how seriously that word should be taken.
Nitrogen ratios also show you that “organic” crops are being fertilised with N-P-K. If organic farmers are too lazy to use leguminous cropping and manure to supply the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium needed then using a bit of pesticide at 2-4 am is not past them.
Leguminous crops as a nitrogen source? Sounds great but there is a catch. Trick questions. Is a soybean crop innocolated with a commercial-strain of Rhizobium N-fixing bacteria and fertilised with superphosphate an organic crop? What if a genetically-modified Rhizobium is used? Purists would say that a soybean crop grown using GM Rhizobia is not “organic” but it would be impossible to prove from analysing the soybeans whether or not a GM Rhizobium had been used. The soybean-rhizobium symbiosis means that the poor soybean is guilty by association. What if the farmer used the soybeans grown using GM Rhizobia as fodder for cattle which he then wanted to sell as “organic”. Gets truly theological doesn’t it? What is the difference between holy water and water out of the tap? If you are a rationalist there is none.
I will not get onto more about GM food but one I find amusing is GM-free organic canola oil. I cannot work out how you could possibly prove from chemical analysis that Canola oil came from GM or non-GM plants. Canola oil has no DNA in it so a PCR is no help either. Working out if N-P-K fertiliser had been used to grow it would also be tricky because only trace amounts of N-containing compounds are in vegetable oils. Detecting pesticide use on the other hand would probably be fairly easy (most are oil-soluble).
You can also get a lot of fun out of a Pulse Amplitude Modulation Fluorometer (PAM) to test all those “farm-fresh” vegetables in organic farmers markets and supermarkets. They are not.

Comment on Florida A&M U. Suspends Dance Team for Alleged Hazing by fortysomethingprof

fortysomethingprof — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:43:00 +0000

This only proves that the punishments in the previous marching band hazing incident were too mild.

Comment on 2 George Mason Economists Introduce Free Online Courses by john7099

john7099 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:34:00 +0000

So when their principles course goes up, will they be giving access to their textbook away for free as well?