Starving artists

BlackBerries in hand, members of the Writer's Guild of America have taken to the streets to protest the grinding poverty in which they languish at the hands of unscrupulous Hollywood executives. Yep, an average salary of $200K per year can sure be a drag. From the New York Times:

Under the previous contract, which expired Wednesday night, the six major studios must pay a minimum of $106,000 for an original screenplay, while networks must pay at least $20,956 for a teleplay for a prime-time comedy and $30,823 for a prime-time drama.

Many working writers earn much more. The writer of a major studio release can expect a paycheck of at least $1 million, according to union members, while “name” screenwriters might earn in the $4 million range per picture. The average working writer in Hollywood takes home about $200,000 a year, according to the studios and networks, which are represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

This blatant exploitation by the studio heads is even more outrageous when you consider the value of screenwriters' contributions to society....

Way to go

Jordan,

Awesome. Good to see that you've joined the esteemed company of Charles Murray and Victor Davis Hanson in writing for American.com. I'm generally allergic to anything sports-related, but I found myself really liking your article nevertheless. Very informative and engaging at the same time. Keep it up!

Bigger Isn't always better

I have a new article published up on The American website. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

Cuban Missle Crisis: Not Quite, But Much More Amusing

Not that Cayuga's Cons or I am endorsing Fred Thompson for the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination, but this is a great video of Thompson's rebuttal to Michael Moore's challenge for a health care debate. It's short and sweet just in case you have "too much work" to watch some quality online video.

Is CNN.com Serious?

As you may (or may not) know, on Monday the FBI foiled a terrorist plot against Fort Dix arresting six radical Islamists living in the Cherry Hill, NJ area. The men were planning on inflitrating the base and firing on soldiers and civilians with AK-47 assault rifles. The terrorists had been scouting the base and training for months in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. According to federal authorities, the men were entering the "last stage of planning" of their attack as they attempted to purchase AK-47s and M-16s from an FBI informant. On Wednesday, the men were charged with immigration violations and terrorism charges.

However, CNN.com has buried the story. There is no mention of the arrest or the charges that had been filed on Wednesday. Instead, headlines such as "Retired Generals launch anti-war ad" and "The Ugly Side of Paris Hilton" grace the front page of "The most trusted name in news"'s internet flagship.

FoxNews, The Drudge Report, and MSNBC.com all have prominent front page stories about the event at the time of this posting.

One must wonder where CNN's head is at in terms of this story's coverage. It seems both odd and disturbing that CNN would bury the story about a potentially catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil in the back pages of it's website. Most visitors to these news websites often only view their front pages, and one would think that this story is a tad more important than what Paris Hilton says or does when she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.

Grade Inflation: It's not just Harvard anymore

Cornellians who missed the cut at Harvard generally like to console themselves by pointing out the Crimson's infamous grade inflation problem, with A's being 46% of grades issued. But it looks as though Cornell might be catching up to its Ivy League rival:

Median Grades on the Rise

Cornell is said to be the easiest Ivy to get into and the hardest to stay in. With the admissions rate reaching an all-time low this year and the number of As on the rise, Cornell’s long-standing reputation may not hold true much longer.

According to Sun archives, 17.5 percent of grades distributed to students in 1965 were As; by 2000, that number had risen to 40 percent.

Furthermore, 17 courses last semester had a median of an A+, while only 13 had a median of a B-, according to the Fall 2006 Median Grade Report. No classes had a median below a B-.

With this story, a few thoughts come to my mind. Many have pointed out that the nationwide trend of grade inflation reflects the "entitlement mentality" of this narcissistic generation; college is becoming more of a credential factory than a place to actually grow in knowledge, and these kids feel entitled to their A's. And professors who wish to earn tenure know that student evaluations matter a great deal, so they make courses less challenging to court favorable student opinion. The result? A decline in academic rigor and an emphasis on GPAs rather than actual learning.

I would be curious to know the precise departmental breakdown of the median grades and number of A's. I've personally never taken a class that even had a grade of A+ as an option, let alone as a median grade. I would venture to guess that the biggest culprits are the "usual suspects" -- the perpetually athlete-friendly Applied Economics and Management major ("AEM"), the Hotel School, and Arts and Sciences departments such as Sociology and any one of the "oppressed group of the week" departments. Grading policy differs greatly from department to department, and I wouldn't be surprised if a few programs were having a very large impact on the grade inflation at Cornell.

The solution? The article talks about a grade deflation policy at Princeton that managed to cut back the number of A's by about 10% with a few years. According to the Sun article, Cornell has no plan for a university-wide deflation program, saying that such change needs to come from the "bottom up." That doesn't make me too optimistic, as many professors have too many incentives to keep students' grades artificially high.

Happy birthday, Shakespeare

He's 443.

Kurt Vonnegut has died

Vonnegut, who wrote Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five, graduated Cornell (in 1942, I think) and was an editor for the Cornell Daily Sun. Read his obituary in Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18081655/site/newsweek/

Helen Thomas at Cornell

I was unfortunately (or fortunately) unable to attend the lecture earlier this week by White House press maven Helen Thomas, but a line from the online Cornell Chronicle article caught my attention:

"We've never been in worse shape as a country."

Really, Ms. Thomas? Granted, the Iraq adventure might not be going so well, but to be able to say that the country is in its worst shape right now shows either a willful ignorance of American history, or a demogogical dishonesty. Are we in worse shape now than, say, between the years 1861-1865, when 600,000 men died in battle on U.S. soil? Or how about the 1930s during the depths of the Great Depression with its staggering unemployment and hunger? The idea that Helen Thomas could say something like that with a straight face, and probably get plenty of students and faculty to applaud her, is baffling to say the least.

One could argue from a conservative perspective that the cultural climate of modern America has plunged to new lows with the continuing abortion holocaust and efforts to legitimize homosexual "marriage," among other things. But somehow I don't think that's what Helen Thomas and her ilk have in mind.

The Overselling of Higher Education

Higher education in the United States has been greatly oversold. Many students who are neither academically strong nor inclined toward serious intellectual work have been lured into colleges and universities. At considerable cost to their families and usually the taxpayer as well, those students sometimes obtain a degree, but often with little if any gain in human capital that will prove beneficial in the labor market or in dealing with the challenges of life.
Read full article here

So says George Leef of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in this new essay. Roughly seven out of ten high school graduates in the United States today go on to college, many of whom will not complete a four year degree. To be perfectly frank, most of these people neither deserve nor even need higher education, and it will likely be to the benefit of everyone if vocational and technical training were emphasized rather than university education. The job market will benefit from more people having real-world experience and skills, the professors will not have to deal with students unprepared for intellectual rigor, and the students themselves will save a great deal of time and money.

For many students, college is not seen as a place to grow intellectually or increase the breadth of their knowledge, but rather as a four-year excuse to drink, party, and otherwise delay the responsibilities of adulthood while doing as little as possible to graduate. The results of this overselling of higher education are manifold: grade inflation, ever-rising tuition costs, the dumbing-down of curricula, and the ultimate devaluation of the Bachelor's Degree itself.

Rabkin's Departure--in his own words

This is from the Cornell Alumni Blog MetaEzra. Here's a passage from Dr. Rabkin's interview with former Sun Editor Andy Guess '06, and it does not bode well for the ability of Cornell to retain its top professors:

On the other side is this: Cornell made no effort of any kind to keep me here. I told my department chair that I had this offer. She told me I could have an "exit interview" to discuss my feelings about Cornell before I left. She did not offer to ask the administration for a counter-offer -- which is the usual thing to do in these circumstances. She did not ask me to wait until I saw what Cornell would offer. She did nothing at all. I waited some five weeks, in the course of which I was never contacted by the chair (Val Bunce) or by anyone else. In the circumstances, I did not feel I had any choice. If an institution wants to keep a senior person, it does what it can to match an outside offer. Cornell didn't even bother to inquire what the details of GMU's offer actually were.

The fact that the Cornell Government Department made little or no effort to try to keep Professor Rabkin here is sad, to say the very least. It is distressing as a student (and soon-to-be alumna) to hear that as distinguished a scholar as Dr. Rabkin did not feel as though his contributions were being adequately appreciated at this university.

You kicked my dog

With students away on Spring Break, except me (stupid storm), I think most students will miss this interesting Cornell news item:

"We are distressed by the reports regarding a Cornell student's torture of a dog. We find any abuse or torture of animals totally unacceptable and abhorrent and the facts of this incident as reported appear to be truly egregious."

Read the rest of the release here.

This is an interesting case as it combines the typical "dog bites man" story (though reverse "dog" and "man," apparently) and it directly relates to the new campus code of conduct. If this case picks up steam, look for it to be used as the reason for why we should welcome the new code with open arms. "Didn't you hear about what that evil student did to that puppy??" Let's see Danny Pearlstein and Jeff Purcell argue against that!

The Great Global Warming Swindle

This video is well worth the 75 minutes of viewing time. "The Great Global Warming Swindle" is a documentary produced in England that demolishes the arguments of "climate change" ideologues using a combination of rigorous scientific analysis and plain common sense.

One of the most striking features of this documentary is its examination of how the environmental movement has actually hindered the development of the most desperately poor people on the planet. Advocates of "sustainable" energy block programs for bringing electricity and clean water to developing countries out of concern for burning fossil fuels, using chemical pesticides, and so forth. These technologies could prevent millions of deaths each year from disease and hunger, but environmental extremists through lobbying groups and other NGOs consistently act to keep the developing world from developing. It is easy to lampoon tree-huggers such as the now-famous Redbud Eight at Cornell, but it's sobering to know that such activism often is literally a death sentence for millions of people in the world's poorest countries.

Get ready to be underwhelmed

Columbia College's graduation speaker is apparently going to be Matthew Fox. Yes, the guy from Lost (or Party of Five for you children of the '90s). Fox graduated from Columbia back in the late 80s and is now famous. The Columbia student body has never been one to let things like this go. Everyone remembers their response to the Minuteman fiasco last fall. It is funny because the students protested John McCain as commencement speaker last spring. I wonder if now they would rather have a presidential hopeful than a B List (I'm being generous) actor.

I bring this up because as of today, Cornell does not have a commencement speaker. As far as I know we do not even have a short list. Now, there is not that much to be said for a great commencement speech. The greatest value probably comes 20 years after the fact when we can say, "That guy spoke at my graduation." Do we want someone who will say something interesting or someone we can brag about later? I would personally prefer the latter. Columbia, unfortunately, will get neither.

RABKIN TO DEPART CORNELL

Sources have confirmed that Prof. Jeremy Rabkin '74, a senior professor in the Department of Government, will be leaving Cornell at the end of the academic year. He will be beginning work at the George Mason University School of Law in the fall.

Prof. Rabkin has had a long and illustrious academic career at Cornell. He has published four books and has won several awards including the Merrill Presidential Award for most influential professor and won the "Best Professor" award for the Ithaca Times in 2002. Prof. Rabkin also serves at several noted public policy organizations, most notably a member of the Executive Committee at the Federalist Society and a member of the Board of Academic Advisers at the American Enterprise Institute.

However, Prof. Rabkin is most notably known for being a strong conservative voice amongst the vast sea of liberal professors in his department and at the university at large. He is currently the lone registered Republican in the entire government department. He also serves as the faculty adviser for the College Republicans. Prof. Rabkin is unabashedly conservative and has contributed much to the conservative cause outside the classroom at Cornell as well as offering his unique points of view on public policy during his lectures.

Prof. Rabkin will be sorely missed at Cornell. Conservatives on campus will be hard pressed to find a new ally amongst the faculty who is so willing and ready to support the cause. Prof. Rabkin's departure is very unfortunate and his support for Cornell's conservatives will be remembered for years to come.