Paul's Perambulations a personal blog

The following is my comment (#75) on the NYTimes article in the title above. Click my comment button for my second comment (#177) on this same article.

Honor societies often mean essentially nothing nowadays. I agree with the many comments that have already made this point. I disagree with #8 who says today’s students work harder. Number 8 and I are each expressing our own experience, but I expected much more work out of my students 40 years ago than I can expect today (and still keep my job). When I graduated from high school, there were four “recognitions” in the entire class of more than 100. My daughter regularly ignored various honor offers she received during her college years. I had to persuade her that $35 for a lifetime membership in Phi Beta Kappa was probably a worthwhile deal — she had dumped the letter.

I submitted the following Comment to the New York Times in response to their  8/5/09 article Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession. (more…)

In mid-April Villanova announced that the commencement speaker would be Admiral William Fallon, a Villanova alumnus whose highest accomplishment was appointment to head of U.S. Central Command, whereby he assumed full responsibility for the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  By honoring Admiral Fallon in this manner, Villanova would be, and would be seen publicly to be, condoning war and particularly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is hardly Christian behavior, and a number of us faculty organized a graduation demonstration to make our peaceable feelings known.

A copy of the flyer that we distributed is posted on the first comment.  The backside of the flyer simply had the word PEACE in large bold letters and could be held up as a visible sign. (more…)

Re the financial hysteria: The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.

 This year the world’s largest cruise ship will be launched, a 220,000-ton behemoth for more than 6000 passengers.  Why?

 The other day Fran and I got into a debate about cosmology, which became particularly heated over the topic of  whether we were talking about the “observable universe” or simply the “universe.”   Google that distinction if you care to.  So very “us.”  I forget how it ended finally (certainly not resolved, but that’s not the point).  I do love her so.

 Some of the following comes from an online debate on the question: Why does the freest nation in the world, the United States, have the highest rate of incarceration (about 1 out of 100) in the world, compared to say Sweden (more like 1 out of 1500)? The discussants noted that it is uncertain if the U.S. can rightly claim the title of  “freest” and in any case the rate of incarceration does not necessarily indicate the degree of general freedom. Freedom can be only be determined by the limits of your body, the comparative strength of those who oppose you, and your willingness to accept the consequences of your actions.  One conception is that a nation will be freest when citizens are willing to, and frequently do, commit acts deemed illegal by government.  In that case, the U.S. could outrank Sweden, whose citizens might be more restricted by their obedience to law than Americans are restricted by the threat of the bars of a jail cell.