Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
My daughter Kristin ( on the far right with her troups during the Invasion of Iraq) has written an excellent article on women in combat … there are many women in today’s military doing the hard job required.
Asked why they are fighting… some women will tell you it is to protect their rights to live free as well as yours.
My heart felt appreciation to all our military personnel for their continuing contribution to preserving our way of life…
Roger Freberg
I was reading on one of the track sites in a post by Harold Connolly that Parry O’Brien passed away. I first learned to throw the shot by studying frame-by-frame pictures of his efforts.
In the photo above, Parry competes in the discus in 1957 in Iowa. O’Brien held the world record in the shot put from 1953 until 1959. At the Drake Relays in 1954 he broke his own world record in the shot put. O’Brien won 18 National AAU championships, 17 of them in the shot and one in the discus.
He was inducted and honored many times… most importantly — to me — he was a Trojan Hall of Famer. He will always be remembered as an inspiration in track & field.
Fight On , Parry.
Roger Freberg
Okay, we are all reading about Virginia Tech… some folks like to rekindle various debates. These issues are distractions from some of the real challenges in colleges today.
The problem is that we have opened our colleges in the name of diversity, and this includes the mentally ill, the criminal and the dangerous.
The violent Virginia Tech student was a wacko ( sorry, am I being ‘judgmental? ). What is worse is that he was a ‘known’ wacko. ….. However, even known wack jobs have rights and thanks to the “ADA“ his right and the rights of other mentally ill folks to go to college has been ensured and protected? You’ll never see a public list of rapists or fellons in your community… yep.. they have ‘rights’… but … I wonder … should they have more rights than your right to be safe or to know?
Here’s the problem facing schools today: colleges are ‘not allowed’ to discriminate against the known wackos who apply. This is no small problem. There is a wonderful story about a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo that couldn’t change out of his dorm room even though his roommate became ‘unstable and scary’…. when he forgot to take his ‘meds.’ Don’t complain to the university because they did not want to acknowledge the problem and the student was forced to continue to pay for his dorm room and live with friends off campus. Not a great solution.
Don’t worry, rumors have it that Cal Poly has a ‘plan’ should something like this ever happen there. The police are to immediately surround and protect the administration building. ok, but what about everyone else?
So, let’s say you are a professor at Cal Poly, you will not know if all of the ‘mentally ill’ in your class have taken their ‘meds’ … or if the ‘meds’ are doing the student any good? Could you imagine if a professor opening their class by asking: “do we have any violent offenders in class today?, rapists?, muggers?” Or…”anyone forget taking their meds?” The professor would probably get fired, tenured or not.
Part of the failure of Virginia Tech’s administration was letting this wacko into school and then letting him continue after incidents. Another part of the problem — in my humble opinion — was the campus police ‘cowardice’ in waiting for the swat team… and no small part of the problem is the teaching of our children to be ‘compliant’ and ‘cooperate’ even in the face of true evil. Teaching ‘courage’ now-a-days is a forgotten virtue.
There was one bright spot of honor and courage … the professor who stood up to the intruder by blockading his classroom door in order to give his students a chance to escape … he knew true evil when he saw it… afterall, he was a survivor of the holocaust and he has already seen that face before. He saved a lot of students that day even at the cost of his own life. I can only hope the students he saved can fully appreciated the gift he gave them and the cost he paid.
Courage is not in holding vigils and lighting candles… but in recognizing the ‘wackos’ in our world and taking actions to keep them subdued….. there are many lessons here…
Roger Freberg
Now, Katie Couric is NOT one of my favorite people… not much I like about her. So, I am not going to pile on too hard over her latest boo-boo.
Allegedly, she may have plagiarized something from the Wall Street Journal. Compare the link to the WSJ Columnist with the story from MSNBC.
Time to sign off, Katie… everyone else has already turned you off.
Roger Freberg
If you have ever studied the art of negotiation or have read Herb Cohen, you’ll know exactly what it means to be ‘sovieted.’
However, allow me to fill you in, should this cold war term leave you wondering.
The Soviets employed a tactic in their negotiations that I’ll simplify by stating some of the more memorable strategies: 1) the object is to make the other guy move no matter how long it takes… and never move even after he ‘gives a little’, 2) Introduce competition into the negotiation ( increase the number of part-time employees not covered by the existing agreement) ,3) stall… then stall some more… he has a ‘deadline’ but you never do, 4) make an agreement that looks good on the surface , announce to the world how wonderful it is with terms like ‘merit pay’… but in reality it is nothing of the sort, 5) ignore outside recommendations unless they agree with you ( as they probably will with the latest impartial analysis).
Well, an impartial analysis has been undertaken and it seems to agree with the faculty’s position… let’s see what happens.
Roger Freberg
Ps. By the way, this is no way like negotiations in the private sector… where the market place has a profound influence on salaries and performance… this is the public sector arena and a battle between bureaucrats and faculty.