Damn Yankees

Trying to break the tradition of Presidents sending wreathes to the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. It's a tradition I was unaware of, although as a member of the D.C. camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I have taken part in several activities there. I just don't remember a wreath from the President. Southern Senators, Congressmen, etc., yes.

Interesting that they say President Bush changed the tradition from sending the wreath on Jefferson Davis' birthday to (Yankee) Memorial Day. Yankee Memorial Day is different from Confederate Memorial Day. Offhand, I don't recall the exact dates, but I think Confederate Memorial Day as we celebrated it there was on Davis' birthday. We don't have any services on Yankee Memorial Day.

I wish...

that Turner Classic Movies wouldn't ruin the channel with this disgusting pandering to ethnic grievances. They're running grossly heavy-handed interviews with hispanic actors about hispanics in film. It's non-stop whining and complaining about the roles hispanics get or got in movies. Please, please, PLEASE stop! Come on--you've got a respectable reputation, but you're ruining your image. Plus, it's just cringe-inducing to watch. Yeugh.

Oh, come on! (part 2)

West Virginia Democrat wants to outlaw Barbie dolls. Sends the wrong message to young girls and such. Yes, it will get laughed out of our legislature, but why do these people even need to suggest these things? (Via Lileks)

Mark Steyn faces off his accuser's sock puppets

Pajamas Media has an almost depressing write-up of Mark Steyn's TV confrontation with his accusers. Depressing because he's convinced he'll lose the case and be effectively banned from the Canadian press. But he certainly got the better of them on TV, and I can only hope that the Canadian public is on his side, fat lot of good that'll do him in the kangaroo court.

Armageddon, here we come!

A lot of my fellow astronomers didn't like the movie Armageddon, since it was pretty ridiculous in its science. True enough, but I don't mind turning off my brain and having a fun time at the movies, so I enjoyed it. But the idea of having astronauts land on an Earth-crossing asteroid is getting some serious consideration now. Rob Landis at Johnson Space Center has been promoting this as a practice for some of the tasks we'll need to master for the manned Mars mission in a few(?) years. He's proposing to use the new Aries/Constellation Crew Exploration Vehicle, which would "land" on the Earth-crossing asteroid 2000SG344. Because it's so small (yacht-sized) and spins, it'd be a tough approach and would have to be anchored to the asteroid.

Landis has a few papers out on this topic. The full text of one is available as a PDF here: Scientific Exploration of Near-Earth Objects Via the Crew Exploration Vehicle. The abstract of another is here.

I love the idea. My only complaint is the use of that horrible PC wording NASA's trying to promote: "crewed" or "human" as opposed to "manned." Ugh! It's a butchery of the English language: "...experience conducting crewed exploration missions..."

The travails of Antioch College

I'd read earlier in the year about Antioch College planning to close. This article says they may remain open a while longer, but things still aren't looking good. I'd never heard of Antioch until I was in college, myself, and Antioch became the subject of ridicule for their sexual harassment policy, which required explicit "verbal consent" at each stage of...let's say, "interaction." ("May I proceed to nibble on your ear, now?")

It wasn't a disapproval of premarital sex, of course. That was all well and good; you just had to stop and do the paperwork (so to speak) at each step along the way. To avoid a rape charge the next day, I reckon.

I've always thought keeping your pants on before you were married was a better solution to the problem, really, but that would be to impose a moral system on the whole enterprise, heaven forbid.

Anyway, though surprising that any college had put such a silly rule in place, it's not surprising it was Antioch that did it. Liberal bastion they:

The alma mater of Coretta Scott King, "Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling and two Nobel Prize winners, Antioch College doesn't grade classes, encourages students to develop their own study plans and combines academic learning with experience through a co-op program in which students leave campus to work in various fields.

The reasons for their current problem confuse me a little. I simply don't expect 150-year-old colleges with their reputation(?) to leak students so badly. But I've read it could be from the administration's losing focus on the college and branching out too far with...well, "branch" campuses and other programs.

Sex Quotas on Academic Panels

(Via Instapundit) The American Historical Association has a sex quota for its panels at annual meetings, and it was about to reject this proposed program because all of the panel were men. Happily, one lady professor stepped up to help them out and offered herself as the token woman. It did the trick.

I'm not aware of any such rule at the American Astronomical Society, to which I belong, but there are a few activists within the organization who have gotten something along these lines (I think) instituted at, say, the Space Telescope Science Institute (which runs the Hubble).

One friend of mine is pushing these, and I enjoyed hearing her ask a lady astronomer about sex discrimination at her grad school (I mean, the school where she had been a grad student). When the young lady answered that she hadn't experienced any, my friend was actually taken aback!

Well, if it goes too far, there's always the suggestion in the article above: Have all of the men appear in drag!