Friday, September 03, 2010

Random Bullets of Friday

- I don’t get the Apple tv thing. It only gets two networks, and they’re ones that I can get over the air for free. Apple, I enjoy following you guys, but you’re missing the point here. The point is to make it possible to drop cable tv, or at least to cut it back all the way to the very basics. Gaining the option of paying again to watch shows I could have tivo’d the first time they were on, on a connection I already have to keep anyway, is not a selling point. I don’t need another way to get ABC. I need another way to get Comedy Central. (Besides, the wii already streams Netflix.) A swing and a miss, Apple.

- Note to granting agencies: it’s one thing to be months late disbursing grant money. It’s quite another to then say that we aren’t allowed to backfill money we fronted to the program while waiting. Grants are supposed to help, not become unfunded mandates. Either be prompt or be flexible; ‘late and strict’ is a terrible combination. Not cool, guys.

- From the 2008 edition (the most current one) of The American Community College, by Cohen and Brawer:

“Sixty percent of the community colleges where faculty are working under [collectively] negotiated contracts are located in just five states: California, Illinois, Washington, New York, and Michigan.” (p. 148)

I did not know that. Food for thought...

- A modest proposal for state legislatures that are getting persnickety about attrition rates in community colleges: either require (and pay for) four years in math in high school or shut the eff up.

- A new definition of “bittersweet”: watching your six year old daughter bound happily onto the bus for the first day of first grade.

- Actual conversation at home:

TG: Daddy, with all those meetings, when do you get your work done?
DD: That is my work.
TG: Really?
DD: Yeah.
TG: Ewwww...