Three Buckeyes might file for the 2011 NFL Supplemental Draft - if there IS one.  My take.

Top pick will be DeVier Posey.  GREAT speed.  Good routes.  Questionable concentration.  He'll go in the 3rd to 5th.

Boom Herron.  RB is the most instinctive position in the NFL and hence the easiest to transition from college to pro.  Several teams are still looking for help at RB and are hoping to find it in free agency.  I look for Boom to go in the 5th thru 7th round.  

Finally everybody's All American: T Pryor.  Two words.  Hartford Colonials.

This post sparked a memory for me.  So I did a little research.

Back to the 7th Grade.  Again.  Sorry.  Our class (7-1, the smart kids, remember?) did a class project.  We ran a business.  The 7-1 Store.   We sold stock (at $.10 a share), bought school supplies (notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, erasers, etc.) and then sold them in the cafateria during the lunch breaks.  We set prices, maintained an inventory, set up a work schedule and worked out compensation based on how much stock you sold, how many shfts  you worked and what additional tasks you had (inventory control, advertising, other administrative tasks)

The store ran most of the school year.  We wrapped up biz in the final month.  Had a "going out of busiess" sale to liquidate assets.  Some of us took inventory in lieu of payment.  And we divvied up the profits to take to our shareholders.  IIRC our investors doubled thier money.  I can still recall how proud I was paying people back.

So I decided to check out what the Seventh Grae at god ol' WJMS is doing now.  The building was torn down two years ago.  My DAD had gone to school in that building.  And of course they don't segregate on the basis of ability any more.  Heaven forfend.    So what's the new project?  They visit a nursing home, and they read to younger kids.  Nice things.  But hardly preparaton to run or understand the running of a business in the global economy of the 21st Century.

Remember when home ownership used to be a big deal? A status symbol? An idicator that you'd “made it” on some level? Work hard and reap the benefits of the American Dream. Then somebody decided that it wasn't “fair.” That Everyone oughta be able town a house, whether they'd done the working, saving, sacrificing to achieve that level of status. They put the cart before the horse. Owning a home didn't make you UMC. Working your way into the UMC enabled you to buy a house. But the powers that were decided to put the cart before the horse.

And now it's happinging again, or rather has BEEN happening, to the college education. Getting a college degree 50 years ago meant you'd DONE something. You'd studied something. You'd achieved certain objective and were granted admission into “the club.” But it wasn't the piece of paper that granted admission. It was the work, sacrifice, dedication and actual, you know, LEARNING that had taken place. Matthew Schaeffer puts it thus in The Higher-Ed Dilemma. “Those of us who question the price and value of higher education don’t disagree that people with B.A.s do much better in life, especially in employment. We disagree about the source of that advantage: The B.A. may mostly correlate with and signal for, rather than impart important qualities. . . . We skeptics think this: Since employers can no longer measure job applicants’ IQs nor put them through long apprenticeships, graduating college is the way job-searchers signal an intelligence and diligence that college itself may have contributed little toward. Employers are (to use a little economic jargon) partially outsourcing their employee search to colleges. This is a good deal for employers, because college costs them nothing, and the social pressure to get a BA means they won’t miss too many good prospective recruits by limiting their search to college grads.”

And it's been going on for quite some time. Two stories from my youth. In 7^th grade they divided us into 4 groups. 7-1 Was the smart kids. 7-2 was the almost Solid students but not quite as sharp. 7-3 were either good kids who weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer or smart kids who caused too much trouble. And 7-4 were either stupid or sever trouble makers or both. I was in 7-1. We had a classmate I'll call Bob (since that was his name.) Bob wore prosthetics on both arms. His arms ended at the wrist. Boney hard and dangerous. Bob came from a poor family. He'd probably been beaten as a child. And he wasn't much of a student. So he was to be in 7-4. Then some beknighted soul decided if he was just IN the good group he'd be good too. So they put him in 7-1 for the year. And lost him forever. He couldn't keep up. He rejected any effort at assistance. He beat the kids who tried to help him. And he dropped out, never to return to school. Would his life have been that much worse had he continued in 7-4? I can't think so. PUTTING someone in a specific social/financial situation does not mean they belong there.

Finally – my camp counselor days. I was tasked with designing the scoring system for our “tribal” competitions. We had 8 teams (or tribes.) As a “track guy” I suggested we use the OHSAA “big meet” system of 10-8-6-4-2-1. It was rejected. Because two teams wouldn't get any point. “If they want points let them do better.” I was overruled. 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1. Not a BIG deal. But even then youth leaders were “doing it.” “We can't give points to some and not others.” SURE we can!!!! Otherwise, the ones who EARN the points realize the points are meaningless and those at the bottom THINK they've accomplished something of value when in reality all that's happened is the powers that be have decided to give them something empty.

And today we're doing it, not with points at summer camp, but with houses, and college degrees.

soon to become, if not already, a continuing feature here in the Fridge:

On Friday's "Real Time," the holier than thou host actually said liberals never talk about nationalizing the oil industry minutes before calling former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) a couple of "crazy" "know nothings" "who both get their historical facts wrong all the time"

I guess Maher missed a serious discussion on this very issue back in 2008 that began when Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told Shell Oil president John Hofmeister during a May 23 House hearing that she wanted the government to take over the entire oil industry.

The following month, a number of Democrats led by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) actually proposed nationalizing oil refineries.

At the same time, a Rasmussen poll found a plurality of Democrats supported nationalizing the oil industry - 37 percent for, 32 percent opposed.

But according to Maher, "you never hear" people on the left talk about this.

As usual, the joke was on him for later in this very program, he called Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann a couple of "crazy" "know-nothings" "who both get their historical facts wrong all the time."

Who's ditzy now, Bill?

from Newsbusted

Lots of news about the disperate education in history our students are getting.  I'll skip most of it even though I find I have to spend significant amounts of MY classtime teaching history/civics that HS's have never touched on.  And it got me to wondering why.  Think I've found an answer buried in an article called Why Is U.S. History High-Schoolers' Worst Subject? over at NRO.com.

While the public would prefer schools to devote their time to enhancing pupils’ concrete civics knowledge, teachers favor the more social lessons of community service and tolerance — no matter that the public ranks these among schools’ least important goals.

For example, in a national survey of high-school teachers we conducted last year, over 75 percent of teachers deemed teaching tolerance to be absolutely essential; in our survey of the general public, only half of the public felt it merited that degree of attention. Likewise, a meager 18 percent of the public wanted schools to promote civic behaviors — e.g., raising money for causes — compared with almost half of all teachers. Nearly twice as many Americans as teachers considered teaching key facts and dates — such as the location of the 50 states — essential.

 Restated:

Should civics/history include the teaching of "tolerance"?

Public 50%  Teachers 75%

Fund raising or canvassing for a cause?

Public 18% Teachers 50%

Actual facts?

Public twice as much as teachers.

So the teachers are teaching what THEY think is important, just not what the REST of us think is important.  Where's the disconnect?

Back in the 70's I was running 800m in 2:02.  In the 80's I was running 400m in 50.2.  In the 90's I was ranked in the top 20 in the world among male sprinters over 35.  In the oughts it went to hell.

But yesterday, for the first time in half a dozen years, I ran a mile nonstop.

My approach las fall had been all wrong.  I kept trying to do a mile and failing - going at t every 2-3 days.  In the winter I changed my entire approach.  I started walking a mile.  Then 2.  Now 3.  And in the spring I pushed it a little further.  I set up three playlists on my I-Pod  seperating my music by beats per minute. Rather than walking those miles I would run one song worth, then walk one song worth.  Even this wasn't, at the outset, completable.  Finally late last week I was successful.  As a result I retried the non-stop mile and completed it in good form.

Subsequent trips will compries TWO song-runs with a one song walk, with a one mile run at least once a week, until I complete a full three miles.  I'll then try a TWO mile run.  The three song-runs until complete, then a three mile run --- which is where I used to START my workout regime, back in the day.

No rush.  Figure I can hit the three mile run by sometime late fall, and perhaps by 2012 I can start doing some speed work again.  Racing by 2013?  A guy can dream, can't he?

For those of you who don't get the reference:

Article One, Section Eight of the US Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power….  To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.

On Thursday the President sent a 30+ page report to Congress justifying continued military involvement U.S. military involvement as “legitimated” by the UN Security Council – saying that therefore no congressional authorization is needed.

U.S. forces are playing a constrained and supporting role in a multinational coalition, whose operations are both legitimated by and limited to the terms of a United Nations Security Council Resolution that authorizes the use of force solely to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under attack or threat of attack and to enforce a no-fly zone and an arms embargo.

A major problem with that argument is that the Constitution’s provisions regarding the United States use of military force mentions Congress, but it doesn’t mention the United Nations as having the right to legitimize the use of American forces.

two more takes:

as addressed by the Austrians:

The president is, of course, absolutely correct in sharing, in his usual keen way, his deep insight that labor-saving inventions such as ATMs and check-in kiosks reduce the need for particular kinds of workers. This is obviously an enormous economic problem. If we really want to protect those kinds of jobs, then there is an obvious answer, supplied by our old friend Frédéric Bastiat: Blot out the sun. If that proves impractical or is seen as too radical, perhaps he could embrace the moderate position: ban electricity. We would radically reduce our carbon footprint and create millions of new jobs, instantly. Also: The ATMs would stop working — jobs, jobs, jobs!

and from NRO:  The REAL problem with the ATM's is not so much that they destroy jobs, but that in at least 50 of 57 states you can’t conduct transactions in Austrian, making it difficult to withdraw enough cash to spread the wealth around to Midwesterners, who then become bitter and cling to guns and religion and antipathy toward people who aren’t like your doctor, who you can keep (if you like him) but you probably won’t because for extra cash he unnecessarily performs tonsillectomies and amputates the feet of people from Kansas, where a while back 10,000 were killed by a tornado that also air-raided villages and killed civilians in Afghanistan, from which we need to begin withdrawing troops by July so we can use the funds to save or create jobs for people who don’t use air pressure gauges to keep the tires on their cash-for-clunkers car properly inflated, requiring them to buy more gas than they otherwise would at $3.84 a gallon and thereby reducing their disposable income and causing them not to buy consumer products, resulting in slower GDP growth that can only be jumpstarted by another round of stimulus spending so the economy won’t go into a double-dip recession that would result in layoffs and a higher unemployment rate than we had even after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that everyone knows was George Bush’s fault.

I have two lines.  Either "blow its nose, wipe its ass and drag it out here" or "I want it so a good vet coulda save it an hour ago."

THIS, from notalwaysright.com, is a new one

Eating Steak On Rare Occasions

In a new "Media Diet" interview at the Atlantic's website, Matthews explains how he sees himself as a conservative of sorts and how he revels in exposing "Grand Canyon[s] of ignorance" on his "Hardball" program (emphasis mine):

I enjoy the competition of ideas. I think in that sense I'm a conservative because I want to save what we have in this country and be tough on political figures. On my show, there's nothing like a good argument. Nothing excites me more than conducting an on-air interview and detecting a Grand Canyon of ignorance in someone—pulling back the veil and showing the man or woman behind the curtain. Most of my programming is spontaneous. I think that instantaneous communication has a great advantage. It's our responsibility to have everything I say be factual. Is this true? Can we prove this? You have to have it right. Occasionally, you make a mistake and you correct it. But you have to be predictably factual. That should be the rule with all media, new or old. Not a good batting average but predictable reliability.

Chris is one to talk about Grand Canyons of ignorance when he says GOP presidential nominees "[look] like the devil," seems to not understand the British were coming for colonists' guns at Lexington and Concord, and smells a GOP 'revenge' motive in the John Edwards prosecution.

That's not to mention him buying hook, line, and sinker the Democratic talking points that the Ryan budget "kills" Medicare, which are patently false. So much for a commitment to being factual.

from