Thank you, Todd Simmons. My degree is now worth less for having read what you had to say.

While perusing the GT archives, I found this awesome story on how OSU ranks according to the US News and World Report. Check out this choice bit:

Over the years, Simmons said, OSU has remained steadily in the third tier, which he said is actually a testament to how hard the university has worked to keep retention, graduation and quality steady despite some very lean budget years.

Although OSU might be firmly stuck in the third tier, Simmons said the university isn’t suffering because of it.

“It really doesn’t have an impact on our recruitment,” he said.

One bright spot on the newly released report, Simmons said, is that OSU’s graduation rate has improved from 56 percent to 60 percent.

Simmons is more interested in other rankings, such as the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s classification, which ranks a university’s quality of research activity. OSU is the only Oregon university to receive a top ranking from the foundation.

“It’s a better reflection of what we really care about,” Simmons said.

Translation: F*** students F*** teaching! Bring on the research dollars!

I'm not saying research isn't a big deal, especially at land-grant school, and one that does do an amazing amount of world-class research. However, it clearly reflects OSU's bottom-line priority that research is more important than students - after all, tuition can't go up too fast, and state funding is, in the long run, decreasing, so it makes a certain amount of economic sense to concentrate on bringing in research funding. But there are 20,000 students here, and someone should tell them they're worth less to the OSU elite than a bunch of bacteria in a lab in a basement somewhere. This kind of move suggests that OSU, at the top, is less about being a university that offers a broad, rounded education and more about being a series of research labs and professional schools that offer job training.

Someone should make copies of this and distribute it at START sessions this summer...

Heh, I said 'credibility gap'.

Reading the Gazette-Times the last few days, one particular statistic caught my eye.

From the story on the death of OSU alum and major donor Martin Kelley:

OSU has improved [its College of Engineering ranking] from being ranked in the 60s to the top 40.

From today's Roses 'n' Raspberries, the same statistic:

Kelley’s generous gift already has helped to move OSU from its place in the middle of the pack of engineering schools to somewhere in the high 30s or low 40s, well on the way to the goal of being in the top 25.

I know OSU has been trying to become a top-25 engineering school for some time now, but this ranking was way higher than anything else I've seen. Just to be sure, I checked the US News and World Report rankings. From what I could find, OSU's engineering graduate program is ranked 80th in the nation and its undergrad 76th. Those numbers are a far cry from the "upper 30s." I don't really like the US News rankings, but the discrepancy there is huge.

The other reason the numbers caught my eye is that they are unsourced in both stories. Combine that with what an OSU faculty member told me - that the OSU College of Engineering makes up its own rankings - and I got suspicious.

As it turns out, my suspicion may or may not be unfounded, as the number mentioned in both stories was given to the GT by OSU and does, indeed, come from some sort of OSU-devised ranking process. As far as I have been able to find out, no one knows what methodology OSU uses to determine how the OSU College of Engineering stacks up against other schools. It could turn out that their methodology is really good - but I doubt it. So:

1) OSU needs to publicize its ranking system and the fact that they use their own, and now, if for no other reason than to avoid the appearance that they are stacking the numbers. As it stands, I see no other reason for OSU to use its own system unless it compares favorably to other, more accepted ranking systems, making OSU look better than it is. This should be a problem for OSU. I hope they're not feeding this line to the Governor or Legislature...

2) The GT needs to start sourcing the ranking numbers for OSU and its College of Engineering, regardless of where the numbers come from. Not doing so will create a credibility problem for the GT if and when people find out OSU is making the numbers up themselves, even if the methodology is good. I have no idea if anyone at the GT has any information on OSU's methodology, but I do know the GT is aware that it's an internally-devised ranking system. I have a request for more information in to the GT, but I doubt I'll hear back.

The bottom line: It's sketchy that OSU is choosing to use its own system in the first place, and the GT is doing OSU - but not the public - a favor by not including that fact in stories that mention the ranking.

Two Reflections

How grateful I was then to be part of the mystery, to love and to be loved.
Let's just hope that is enough.

- "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And Be Loved)", Bright Eyes


Part One

I am approaching one year since I ended a six-year relationship. That event marked a clear break in my life, the last year being filled with new experiences, new thoughts, new feelings, new people, many different than what my life had been made of the year before. I've been filled with joy at all the wonderful people that have entered my life even as I fight the sadness that results from the ongoing realization that I may have permanently lost a friend.

Part Two

It's the end of the academic year. My life, since before I can remember, has revolved around that year. Given my current job and location in Corvallis, it still does.

I have always struggled to handle the fact that many of my friends will, inevitably and for a variety of reasons, move away, something that happens, also inevitably, in the summer. It was hard when I started college without them around; it was hard when they started graduating; it's hard now, when I'm out of school.

This year, it's been much worse than in the past. I know I'm not the only one dealing with this, but - to invert a question a question I asked of a friend earlier today - how do you communicate the emotional depth and weight of sadness, of a feeling of loss? How can I communicate to others what they mean to me, what I've gained from my time spent with them, what I want to offer them in support and friendship and love, what I've learned from watching them move beautifully through the world? Anything I can think of to say seems wholly inadequate.

Right now, I am at a loss. I only know that it hurts, and that there will be more pain, and that I will make new friends, and that we will share in each other's happiness, and that they, too, will eventually leave, and I will hate the world again for doing this to me.

I am trying to remember how much fun I've had, and what it's like to get together with an old friend, and sometimes that works. Tonight? Not so much.

Remember this when he becomes McCain's VP choice.

From (of all places) redstate.org:

Today, Gov. Jindal signed the "Sex Offender Chemical Castration Bill"...

SB 144 by Senators Nick Gautreaux, Amedee, Dorsey, Duplessis and Mount provides that on a first conviction of aggravated rape, forcible rape, second degree sexual battery, aggravated incest, molestation of a juvenile when the victim is under the age of 13, or an aggravated crime against nature, the court may sentence the offender to undergo chemical castration. On a second conviction of the above listed crimes, the court is required to sentence the offender to undergo chemical castration.

As far as I know, this is not a joke.

No one deserves chemical castration. No one.

Quoted from an email I just sent

"The definition of education has always been contested terrain. Education as prison, education as babysitting, education as job training.... education as liberatory, education as a privilege, education as a means to an active citizenry.... none of these has ever completely won; all have influenced education, including higher education, as a whole [and certainly the list is not complete]. Certainly at different times and in different cultures, one particular ideology may become dominant. Here, now, I see the trend as anti-liberatory, anti-critical thinking and pro-job training. In other words, pro-capitalist."

From the 'WTF?' files

The entirety of a comment left over at the GT:

bigmike45 wrote on Jun 24, 2008 8:18 AM:
" Jerry:

Since I am a law abiding citizen I do have little to NOTHING to fear from FISA. If they want to search my house hopefully they send in the insomniac squad because they will be cured when they are finished with the search.

I do not fear FISA or the Patriot act. What I fear is people like Al Gore telling me how I have to live my life. If you fear loss of freedom in America then look into what people of Gores ilk want to do to your life. "

Let me get this straight: Government agents searching your house and/or listening in to your phone calls without a warrant and without cause? OK.

Having to change some behaviors in response to the damage we're doing to the environment? A total loss of freedom!

The cognitive dissonance required to produce that statement - and no, that's not satire - is incredible.

If the GT wants a decent commenter base, they need to take steps to make that happen. No one is going to want to join the party if the other guests are mean.

White and Nerdy

When I see this, why am I reminded of this?

Hacktackular Part Two

This time, hering's editorial on DeFazio's sponsorship of a new bill aimed at oil and gas companies gets a much closer examination.

Hering:

You can’t go wrong blaming the oil companies for the current troubles with fuel. Apparently that’s what Congressman Peter DeFazio figures.

Is that possibly because oil companies have something to do with it? Hering never considers the notion - which is the same thing he's accusing DeFazio of. Oops.

He claims that the oil industry is hoarding untapped oil resources by not bringing millions of acres of federal oil and gas leases into production. To hammer home that point, he and other Democrats have introduced a bill that would force lease holders to perform or give up their leases.

This hoarding claim sounds pretty far out. Actually, what it sounds like is an attempt to find somebody to blame so that the people won’t blame him and other Democratic opponents of off-shore drilling for the price of gas.

No it doesn't: It's a basic element of supply and demand. If one can artificially keep supply low, the price for a good will increase. See, for example, diamonds. Simply spending years and years doing studies is great cover for not drilling. Also of note? That oil companies are raking in record profits, which is counterintuitive. If things are so tight, with such consequences for people (think increased food and energy costs) how can companies justify adding pure profit? Shouldn't they - as good Americans - be willing to sacrifice along with the rest of us?

The jump that Hering makes - from DeFazio's bill to opposition to offshore drilling - is a pretty far-fetched one. Opposition to off-shore drilling is longstanding, and is due to environmental reasons (note that even the Republican Florida House Speaker, Marco Rubio, is opposed to off-shore drilling), not scarcity ones. Off-shore drilling, given current technology, is guaranteed to pollute beaches and kill wildlife. And, as Rubio notes, drilling off-shore won't produce in any substantial capacity for at least a decade. Does Hering mention any of this? Of course not - it's far too convenient to ignore any contrary evidence.

DeFazio points to a congressional committee’s report claiming that the millions of acres of unexploited federal oil and gas leases could sharply increase domestic supplies of those commodities and, of course, wipe out a big share of our energy imports. Well, you have to wonder, if that’s so and the dastardly oil companies won’t do their duty, why doesn’t the government just cancel those leases and hire someone to produce those copious amounts of oil and gas? [emphasis added]

Two words: Dick Cheney.

One more word: Arbusto.

A few more words: Oil and gas industry donations go overwhelmingly to Republicans. We're talking on the order of 70-80% in the last decade.

Hering would make a terrible, terrible detective. All this evidence, and he somehow missed it...let me put it another way: The Bush Administration and its members have a long and detailed history of supporting the oil industry to the detriment of the public good. There is no reason, in fact, to think they would do something like what Hering suggests.

The American Petroleum Institute has a more plausible explanation.

See my previous post for why this statement is absurd and completely incorrect.

The industry points out that companies pay lots of money — “billions” in the API talking points — for the right to explore on federal land.

OK - given this, the proper question to ask is this: Do companies stand to make more by paying these billions and then securing supply? And yes, that makes sense - it's called an investment. What do you think advertising is? How about working the stock market by buying and then simply holding on to a resource or stock, just because doing so affects the value of other existing holdings?

Also, he admits to using API talking points. How about some original research? How about some kind of independent source instead of the industry trade group?

I'm really tired of the media equating the most powerful source with the most legitimate voice.

According to the institute, in many cases the so-called idle leases are not truly idle. “They are under geologic evaluation or in development and could be an important source of domestic supply.”

This is completely irrelevant - Hering is just implying DeFazio does not take that into account. In fact, as DeFazio's website makes clear:

Oil and gas companies, however, are not required to demonstrate diligent development. Because of this, oil and gas companies have been allowed to stockpile leases in a non-producing status, while leaving millions of acres of leased land untouched. H.R. 6251 directs the Secretary of the Interior to define what constitutes diligent development for oil and gas leases.

DeFazio evens allows for the possibility that the definition of "diligent development" will still allow oil companies to drag their feet on moving towards production, this continuing to keep supply artificially low.

Heck, even the text of the bill just asks for a good-faith effort.

In case you thought I was done with Hering, I'm not:

Exploring for oil, though, is a chancy proposition met by failure more often than success. Remember the oil company trucks that crawled around the mid-valley some 30 years ago, thumping the ground in a fruitless hunt for oil or gas-bearing strata deep underground?

No, Hasso. The answer is no. No one remembers that but you. Also? No one cares. Why is this even in the editorial? It's irrelevant trivia - so someone unsuccessfully looked for oil in the mid-valley? So what? How does that even relate to the issue at hand, much less prove any kind of point?

The industry invokes common sense: “If the company finds resources in commercial quantities, it will produce the lease.”

Since Hering is so free-market, I can only assume even he doesn't believe that, and is therefore trying to feed the rubes a line. It's far more 'common sense' to manipulate supply to earn more money than it is to develop every known field as fast as possible.

I have to give it to Hering, though: He has a way of reducing everything into cliches that sound good as long as you don't think about them too much.

But often there are delays, which can be 10 years or more, for environmental and engineering studies, permits, installing platforms and other gear, not to mention litigation and regulatory disputes.

Such delays are accounted for in the DeFazio bill through the use of the "good faith effort" language. Either Hering didn't read it (it's less than one page long) or he ignored it, which makes him something of a liar by omission. I don't really care which it is - neither should be acceptable behavior for an editor.

The industry points out something else: Two-thirds of federal lands and 85 percent of the continental shelf are off-limits or face severe restrictions, and there’s no way to tell if there’s any oil or gas there because exploration has not been allowed.

Mayhap there is a reason for this? Reading Hering, you would never know.

As long as we must rely on fossil fuels to keep our economy going, we ought to develop everything we can.

Like I noted above, cliches that sound good until you think about them. What's the 'argument' he's making here? That we should burn oil as fast as possible. That he has managed to find a way to express that sentiment and still sound sane is a testament to his abilities as a writer and rhetorician. That it's an idiotic sentiment is, apparently, not much of a concern for him.

It sounds positively stupid and selfish at the same time to urge the Saudis to produce more oil while we refuse to look for oil even in places where we think we have some.

Um, no. It sounds like we give half a shit about our environment - and are perfectly willing to be hypocrites. (Also, it might sound like drilling oil in a desert doesn't harm the local environment to near the same degree, but I could be wrong.)

This has to be one of the worst editorials I have ever read in terms of total willingness to shill for private industry - and willingness lie and mislead one's readers to do it. I know Lee has a reputation as a conservative company, but this should really be beyond the pale. If there's even a shred of interest left in working for public enlightenment and the public good, the Democrat-Herald will issue a retraction and an apology and start having someone else pen the editorials.

Hacktackular

Hering:

You can’t go wrong blaming the oil companies for the current troubles with fuel. Apparently that’s what Congressman Peter DeFazio figures.

He claims that the oil industry is hoarding untapped oil resources by not bringing millions of acres of federal oil and gas leases into production. To hammer home that point, he and other Democrats have introduced a bill that would force lease holders to perform or give up their leases.

This hoarding claim sounds pretty far out. Actually, what it sounds like is an attempt to find somebody to blame so that the people won’t blame him and other Democratic opponents of off-shore drilling for the price of gas.

DeFazio points to a congressional committee’s report claiming that the millions of acres of unexploited federal oil and gas leases could sharply increase domestic supplies of those commodities and, of course, wipe out a big share of our energy imports. Well, you have to wonder, if that’s so and the dastardly oil companies won’t do their duty, why doesn’t the government just cancel those leases and hire someone to produce those copious amounts of oil and gas? Wouldn’t that go a long way toward not just making us independent of Venezuela and the Arabs but also shore up the sagging federal budget?

The American Petroleum Institute has a more plausible explanation.

You can stop there. The API is the main industry trade group for oil. In other words, it's a bunch of lobbyists funded by oil companies. API also tends to fund anti-global-warming research.

Quoting them as a factual source of information - indeed, the latter half of Hering's editorial seems pretty clearly cribbed from an API press release - is like quoting Karl Rove as a nonpartisan political observer: It's obviously bullshit.

Even Hering should know better.

Oh, wait: It is cribbed from an API-released document.

It's nice to know API can rely on Hering to speak out against Peter DeFazio. If only the DH had an editor and not a tool, I wouldn't have to spend so much amusing Stoller with my endless stream of.... hey, I should start a HeringWatch blog...

...nah. Too much work. Maybe if I had some co-bloggers. Paging Stoller...

Anyway, the moral of the story? Hering hacks more than HM Stanley.