NPR - Yes! Phlox News - What?

This is just great. Watch Phlox News and know less! Now presently no evidence is suggesting that regular doses of Phlox News actually damages your brain, it is now certain that you get less accurate information to put in your brain than from any other major news source. In fact, people who use Phlox News as their primary source of information actually did worse than people who watched no news whatsoever. Ouch!  The old no-news-at-all control!  And of course NPR and Sunday morning talk radio provide so much more. No wonder the Phactors are so well informed!  However, and this is the basic gotcha on just about everybody, people who watch the Daily Show do almost as well as NPR listeners, so imagine how well us NPR + John Stewart combo listeners will do. It is of course sad that politics and the affairs of state in our country are such that making fun of them is one of the most informative things you can do. It does however worry me to find people who don't think the Daily Show is funny, or that politicians don't deserve to be ridiculed. After all if they only would stop saying and doing stupidly funny things. 
Now take recent events here in Lincolnland as an example. The GnOPe is hot to win the next gubernatorial election, so they are fielding a slate of woeful hopefuls, none more hopeful nor more woeful than our current state treasurer Dan Rathernot. At a time when no public allegations had been made against him, Dan calls a news conference to say that the allegations made against him that no one knew about were actually a politically motivated dirty trick by one of his opponents.  What allegations, Dan? We're not hear to talk about any allegations, just about that it reflects badly on my opponent. Huh? The man regularly gets outsmarted by fence posts. Hmm, not a good example because it really isn't very funny and is just a sad example of the Peter Principle really.

Political retirement in Lincolnland

The most recent former governor of Lincolnland, Rob Bag-o-chips has been retired to a federal pen for the next 12 years (85% of a 14 year sentence) making him the 4th of the last 7 to end up in the pokey. This tells you a great deal about how politics works in our fair state; it's all about money and you pay the man. Lincolnland has a 2 party system giving you the choice between incompetent and crooked. Hopefully someday the grand high potentate of Madiganistan, the guy who runs the entire legislature, will break through the ethical thin ice upon which he skates, but he is just so good at it. Don't think any other state can match this record.

Not really news

This isn't really news or even slightly surprising, but our great state, Lincolnland, although one columnist calls this Madiganistan after the guy who really runs things, has another former governor going to prison. This shouldn't come as a surprise even to Bag-o-chips himself; no one ever liked him, he didn't do very well as governor, and no one ever believed him, so testifying on hisr own behalf must been an extremely desperate strategy. This is becoming almost a tradition for governors with 5 of the last 8 convicted of something. As John Stewart put it, "If you're in a room with 2 or more former governors of Lincolnland, you can be pretty sure the room is in a prison." Generally speaking they do less damage in prison and the cost to the tax payers is about the same although often the terms are a bit longer.

New fun and games with public education in Lincolnland

The grain, er brain, trust that runs Lincolnland is looking into using some type of assessment metric to evaluate public institutions of higher learning and then use that ranking to determine state support. The code phrase is "out-comes based funding". This is such a terrible idea on so many levels you hardly know where to begin. OK, let's start with the un-obvious. What's the point? Is it to get better performance out of poor performing institutions by punishing them financially and removing resources? Yeah, that should work. Is it to put more resources into the best performing institutions to get the most bang for the buck? Increased resources? To education? In Lincolnland? Yeah, that was ridiculous. Is it to have some reason to further cut state support? Duh! It makes your head hurt every time someone wants a "metric" to evaluate higher education. Graduation rate, degrees per dollar, grants per faculty, wins per sports scholarship. Who knows. Oh, but won't that help improve the quality of higher education if degrees awarded or some similar metric is used. Can you say pandering? You can see the new slogan now: "Lower your standards and save your funding." And of course, we still have mopes out there, even in education itself, who bemoan the lack of assessment, the lack of a metric to use as a basis of comparison, which means the failure of faculty to know if anyone is learning anything. Has the Phactor calmly commented on this before? The more selective institutions will have it made so to speak, and woe be to institutions who mission requires them to admit riskier students. Nothing whatever good can come of this. Sorry, but the link to this news story was lost, but this is what it's based on. How can this not lead to gamesmanship being played and putting state insitutions into a competition for limited resources? Oh, maybe it'll be "Reality Higher Education". Today one of our state insitutions will be voted out of existence because of regular poor performance and failure to meet their outcomes. Next year another one will be at the bottom, and you see where this leads. Ah, yes, folks, Lincolnland where all our kids are out-of-state students.

Politics in Lincolnland - Fall 2010

The Phactor does not blog about politics very often because it is so depressing, and as an educational elite, i.e., someone who can think for himself and recognize rhetorical BS for what it is, there is very little to say except this country seems to be reaching ever lower toward a least common denominator representative government, and as a result we will get what we deserve. Lincolnland has a wonderful choice for governor, a bumbling incumbent, well, he is governor, but only because Bag-of-chips got impeached, and his not-ready-for-prime-time GnOpeP challenger. The latter has been our representative in the state government for the past 2 decades during which time he has never displayed an ounce of leadership and whose key legislation all involves conservative social agenda items. This will be one of those times when you hold your nose and vote for the incumbent, who however hapless, will perform better than his opponent whose economic agenda reflects his utter cluelessness. Too bad there isn't a really viable 3d party candidate.

Enhancing diversity, hope, and anticipation

A total of 273 plants flowering in our gardens in a single season is pretty good, but now is the time to prime the pump so to speak for next season. This is being accomplished by planting some new spring bulbs. One in particular puzzled the Phactor for several years; a small early flowering bulb with pale blue on white flowers looking a bit like a pale flowered squill, but many flowered on a small raceme like a hyacinth. Further they had somewhat dilated stamen filaments like another spring liliaceous bulb Chionodoxa, glory of the snow. The only place these flowers had been observed was in a neighbor's front lawn planted there by owners long past, and this being an historic neighborhood and all such surprises are not uncommon, and by and large most of us do not have the primal urge to dig them out. But lacking any means of systematically identifying such plants, there being no guide to exotic spring flowers, they remained a mystery until happening upon Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica alba, and of course, it's supposedly related to both Scilla and Chionodoxa. Ta da! Unfortunately no image exists in my garden files; but wait until spring. Now we only have to find 26 more to push us to the 300 plants flowering thresh hold, but still there are some young shrubs that might come through for us in the coming year. And is this not the way of the gardener? Always looking to the coming season with hope and anticipation, sort of like being a Cubs fan but with a much better record of success. Don't you just once want a political candidate to say, "Gardening is my favorite passtime, and I wish to use my position to enhance the lot of gardeners everywhere by passing a universal mulch plan." Unfortunately what we get is insubstantial compost, especially here in Lincolnland. But more thoughts on this will have to wait for a less sunny day. Today we garden with optimism.

Bag-o-chips, Impeached Governor of Lincolnland

A regular sport here in Lincolnland is awaiting the verdict on public officials on trial, especially governors. Prosecutors tend to get over zealous in pursuit of public officials, often throwing the book at them, with the unfortunate effect of watering down the most serious breaches of public trust with charges of jay-walking and littering. All indications are that the jury deliberating the indictments against Bag-o-chips will not reach a verdict on a great many of the charges, and only find him guilty of littering or parking in a handicap space. Like a great many soap operas, silly dramas on a small stage, the outcome does not seem to matter. Who cares really? Whether guilty of selling his influence or not, the citizens of Lincolnland learned that Bag-o-chips was not really interested in being governor, and was doing a horrible job of it; more than enough reason to remove him from office, and that is what really mattered. So who really cares if he fixed a parking ticket or not (He didn't; it's the Chicago police who do that when they aren't beating the crap out of you.). Bag-o-chips is yesterday's news, and my only wish is that the media would stop referring to him as "former governor of Lincolnland"; he's the impeached governor, a very special category and we should always accord him that honor. The truly depressing thing is that our choices this November seem to be between a rather undistinguished, and at least somewhat incompetent fellow who moved up into the empty post, and an opposition party challenger, who in some 20 years representing us has not a single noteable accomplishment to his name, a fellow who clearly would be out of his depth as governor. Some choice! But at least neither has been indicted.

Lincolnland politics

Here in Lincolnland we have a two party system; politicians are either inept or crooks, and sometimes both. Our former Governor Bag-o-chips, on trial for corruption, has rested his case without offering a defense except for proclaiming his innocence to the press, but not the jury. Whether found innocent or guilty hardly matters at this point. We have been duly entertained by the spectacle, but now wish to move on. What is known for certain is that his only interest in the job was to seek a higher and more lucrative office, that he paid little attention to the affairs of state, actually never trying to earn the salary he found so paltry or show himself worthy of higher office, that he spent an inordinate amount of time scheming how to get the money that would allow him to seek a higher and more lucrative office, and that having been a horrible excuse for a governor he still could not understand why the people of Lincolnland disliked him so very much. What has not, and in all likelihood will not occur to Bag-o-chips is that he is quite guilty of a far worse crime; he violated the trust of the people who elected him. So for that reason alone the choice we voters have this fall is comforting because the choice is between the current inept occupant and his even more inept challenger. How can we go wrong?

Put back MAP grants cause students needs them

The budgetary crisis here in Lincolnland has led to many cuts in state programs including MAP grants for higher education. Now budgetary crisises are nothing new here in Lincolnland, one emerges annually, as our representative jocks play political football with money. And higher education certainly doesn't expect any favors, especially since out representatives figured out that they could gradually withdraw support from the state supported colleges and then dun them for letting tuition rise faster than costs. So naturally those colleges & universities must be wasting money on stuff like faculty salaries. During the Phactor's 30+ year career, state support has dropped from 66% to less than 25% of our budget. But this year the need-based MAP grants got cut, and as a result over 130,000 students wondered about how they were going to pay for the rising tuition brought about by diminished state support. And while our political jocks complain about job losses to China, China is putting more and more government support into higher education. They must know something our "leaders" don't. So while not worried about my own livelihood per se, the Phactor was pleased to see that MAP was restored, albeit in that great Lincolnland tradition without any funding, because as this student's sign demonstrates, they needs of their education.

More ethical lapses in Lincolnland.

This comes as no surprise to long time residents of our great state, but it appears that political influence has been playing a large role in the admission process at Lincolnland U. Go, LULU, Go! Yes, it seems that students who lack the academic credentials still get admitted to LU if they have political pull, and of course, it isn’t the faculty allow this to happen. It’s the high mucky-mucks who insinuate that those dastardly faculty grade too easy. This is even worse than legacies who at least had the decency to have had well educated, and almost always well heeled parents. I mean how else do you explain W at Yale?

This all brings to mind that famous scene in Tom Cruise’s best movie ever, Risky Business. After being told his record isn’t quite up to Ivy League standards, Joel says, “Looks like it’s LULU!” Or something to that effect. But you know, this isn’t the ivy league out here in Lincolnland, so I’m not sure what the big deal is, other than it takes the edge off the idea that when you're a LULU you are part of some sort of elite student body, one which by definition is more prestigious than Some Other State U. no matter how you perform. Sorry folks, it's just a big corn college.

So what does the Phactor do about all this? Well, my approach is to even the playing field. Yes, they all end up in the same classroom, and part of my job is to set the bar high enough to figure out which ones should be entrusted with taking out our gall bladders and teaching biology to our kids, and which ones should switch majors to communications. So no matter how they were admitted, they have to go through the Phactor Philter.

Only once did a student ever try to pull rank by telling me, "My Mother is a very important person." "No kidding", says I, "then I bet she did better than this when she took biology." "What say we talk to her about your work ethic?" That student had a major league back pedal.

Rainforest reality might be dangerous

The Phactor is as familiar with and as comfortable in the rainforests of Costa Rica as anyone in Lincolnland. So learning that the former 1st lady of Lincolnland was “in reality camping out” in those same rainforests fills me with concern. She’s a city person, and a great many dangerous organisms live in those rainforests, more snakes, especially very well camouflaged pit vipers, live there than any place I’ve ever visited, and I’ve visited many. The 1 inch long black bullet ant (seen here) is reputed to have the most painful sting of any stinging insect, and those unfortunate enough to have experienced it leave me convinced. There are lots of thorny, spiny plants too. Stilt palms seem specifically designed to trip you and mangle your falling flesh. Both puma and jaguar prowl the depths of the rainforest (their tracks tell of their presence), and that may be why the peccaries, when startled, let loose a cloud of skunk-like odor that brings tears to your eyes. And before you jump in a stream to wash off that smell, do look out for crocs.

However the source of my great trepidation is that all these innocent creatures have no adaptations for dealing with the lying, cheating, back-stabbing, name-calling, back-room-deal-making, pay-to-play, corrupt politicians of Lincolnland, or their equally conniving spouses.

Senator Burris misforgotspokelied. Is anyone surprised?

Well, folks, I don't think anyone here in Lincolnland is even mildly surprised. Now that Senator I-have-memory-slips Burris has had a month or so to think about it, he now recalls talking to our impeachy former Governor's brother about the senate seat and helping with some campaign contributions. So in his former testimony he sort of misforgotspokelied. Ah, but you know those Blago boys are such kidders, who knew they were serious!

Of course in his appointment hearings Burris was asked point blank if he ever discussed the senate seat with anyone related to the Governor. No, Burris did not remember a thing. So we are to believe the telephone rings and the brother of the governor asks about possibly appointing him to the senate, and this career political hack who has built a garveyard monument to his own mediocrity, doesn't remember a thing about it. Sure. I twould be easier to believe they don't grow corn in Lincolnland. Why fess up now?

You can almost see the sweat on Burris' forehead. Do you think it was those ginkgo pills that improved his memory, or maybe our impeachy governor's recent threat to blow the whistle on all the political deals and other dirt he knows about? Why you'd think Senator Burris may have dealt with our former governor before, and thinks he isn't bluffing. So Burris decides it's better to do some spin control now rather than get Blagoed later.

Wonder what other old memories will surface in the coming weeks as various state office holders decide to Burris it? No question it will continue to amuse us voters of Lincolnland.