Dowbrigade

"I’m too ugly to get a job."

— Daniel Gallagher, a Miami bank robber, after police captured him in
2003

The hapless Mr. Gallagher may have been ugly, but he was also wise.

Not only are physically unattractive teenagers likely to be stay-at-homes
on prom night, they’re also more likely to grow up to be criminals, say
two economists who tracked the life course of young people from high school
through early adulthood.

"We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison
to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime
in comparison to those who are average-looking," claim Naci Mocan
of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University.

from the Washington Post

This is the kind of social science study that raises more questions
than it answers. It is easy to imagine or invent causality to explain
the link between ugly people and crime:

• The ugly are rejected by play groups as children and grow up with feelings
  of aiienation and a desire to get back at an unfair society and popular peers.
• Physically attractive kids get more attention and encouragement in school,
  and as a result do better, graduate at a higher rate, and have more successful
  careers. Lack of education and high drop-our rates are correlated to crime.
• Good looking people learn early to get others to do things for them, like
  the dirty work. Many attractive people may be living off of others, or
  gettting others to committ crimes for them.
• Ugly people have a harder time getting hired, or being successful in
  jobs involving face-to-face interaction with clients. They may be more inclined
  toward crime as their careers flounder.

However, it is dangerous and difficult to make connections without
solid evidence, of the sort that these studies can never provide. Clearly,
more
attention and speculation need to be turned on this topic.  How do
changing standards of beauty affect the equation? How about cosmetic
surgery? What strategies do ugly people develop to compensate for their
disability? How ugly would we have to be to qualify for disability
payments?

MALIBU, Calif. — Authorities are investigating the circumstances
behind a spectacular crash on Pacific Coast Highway that destroyed a
rare Ferrari Enzo estimated to be worth more than $1 million.

The red Ferrari was going at least 100 mph when the driver lost control
and struck a power pole, investigators said. The car — one of only 400
made — shattered, with its engine coming to rest on the highway and its
wreckage scattered.

Sheriff’s investigators identified the owner as Stefan Ericksson, 44, of
Bel Air, who escaped the wreck with only a cut lip.

"For $1 million, you get a very good passenger-safety system, and
apparently in this case it did work," said Sgt. Philip Brooks of the
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Authorities said Ericksson told them he was a passenger and the driver
was a German acquaintance he knew only as Dietrich, who he said ran into
the nearby hills. A three-hour search failed to turn up anyone, and officials
said they were skeptical of the account. Only the driver’s side air bag
deployed, Brooks said.

from the
LA Times

Actually, we think we know that guy Dietrich. He was driving OUR car the
night it jumped the railing on Route 2, skidded across four lanes of traffic,
and ended up pinballing around the lot of Rt. 2 Audi BMW. After the accident,
he ran off into the nearby hills (do we detect a pattern of criminal behavior
here?), leaving behind anything that may or may not have been discovered
in the tan canvas bag in the trunk.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. –In his five-year tenure at Harvard University,
President Lawrence H. Summers frequently found himself in the spotlight
because of rifts with faculty at the Ivy League institution.

Tuesday, facing the second no-confidence vote by faculty members in
a year, Summers announced he would leave June 30, bringing to a close
the briefest tenure of any Harvard president since 1862, when Cornelius
Felton died after two years in office.

from the Boston Globe

Just five years? It seemed like 50! Larry, we hardly knew ye. If there
is a lesson in here somewhere it is that, yes, the President of Harvard
has to be a master politician, and yes, the President of Harvard has
to be a master fund-raiser, but first and foremost, the President of
Harvard has to be smarter than you and me, and smarter than all the other
university presidents in the land. If you try to give the job to a normally
smart political fund raiser, he or she is doomed to fail, if only because there are so many naturally obstreperous world-class intellects in the 02138 zip code.

If the person is smart enough, in an academic sense (which means knowing
more about some obscure subject than anyone else in the world, even if
it is so obscure than hardly anyone else knows or cares about it), nothing
else matters. In order to protect the reputation of the institution,
Harvard has over the centuries had to keep several notable Presidents
under wraps, so to speak, relegated to windowless back rooms in the bowels
of Civil War era architectural behemoths and only brought forth on ceremonial
occasions, bundled in pharmacological blankets and surrounded by stout
Trustees to avoid embarrassing mishaps.

It just wouldn’t look good for Harvard to be changing Presidents as
frequently as, say, an upstart institution like the Federal government.
Why, previous Harvard President Neil Rudenstine had a complete mental
breakdown while in office, reduced to staring out the window of Harvard
Hall while playing with his peas and carrots, and was forced to take
a "Leave of Absence" while they got him back to the point where he could
sign his name again, and he still lasted 10 years.

Given Summer’s recent propensity for stepping into deep doo doo over
topics like innate vs. acquired sex differences and recruiting minorities
for the faculty, it is less shocking that the Harvard brain trust
is showing him the door than is the selection of his successor. Who even
knew that Derek Box was still alive? The man was named President of Harvard
in 1971, the year the Dowbrigade arrived on campus as a freshman. The
guy was ancient before WE even got kicked out the first time! James Michael
Curley was still Mayor of Boston!

We guess we should be happy that the World’s Greatest U has turned
back the clock to the guy we will still always consider "our" Harvard President,
but we may have forfeited our right to criticize.  After all, we
currently work at a Major Boston University which dismissed its President
the day BEFORE he was to be inaugurated,  necessitating a payoff
of several million dollars to just go away.

Actually, the Dowbrigade is thinking of throwing his hat into the ring
on this Harvard job. How long can Bok actually last, after all? And how hard can it be to preside over the World’s Richest School? After
400 years, isn’t it time for something completely different.

from the
Boston Globe

An interesting article appeared on the front page of the New
York Times today concerning the balance between utility and imposition represented
by student email to college professors.

We are pretty much reading the Times from cover to cover these days,
as the morning trek to buy it at the Keno Spa on the corner, where swarthy
middle-aged Armenians with time on their hands sit around drinking coffee
and watching
numbers flash on faded, dusty CRTs hanging in the corners, has come to
constitute one of our three daily doctor-ordered walk-arounds, supposedly
to avoid bedsores and blood clots.

Inevitably, now that we are actually paying for the news, its quality
and blogability seems to have declined. So we were delighted to see a
front page article on a topic we actually knew something about, and on
which we feel moved to opine.

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors
much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible,
erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message
asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade,
and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that
she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking
too much at a wild weekend party

It has been years now since we had a student without an email account. These
days, the first week collections of email addresses is more a question
of which email address to give out. The general catch-all
we use to sign up for every assorted thing and which has become such a
spam spa that the filters that make it marginally functional end up sending
at least one in ten real messages to the Davey Jones Locker of our Junk
Mail folder? The super-secret virgin personal address which is still thankfully
99% spam-free, but only because it is so jealously guarded? One of
the short-term, throwaway addresses we can create, divert or destroy with
a click on our personal Dowbrigade domain?

The reality is that we DO rely on email to keep in touch with out
students during the semester. Our email address, along with our office
hours and
office telephone are listed on the syllabus that students get in week
one. Because we are rarely in our office (favoring classrooms, the
Multimedia Learning Labs, the faculty computer room, the IT office or
the Starbucks down the block), have yet to master the remote review
of messages to that phone line, and as a rule refuse to share our cell
phone number with students, they soon discover that email is the only
viable
method for getting our
attention
on short
notice.

These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around
the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages – from 10 a week
to 10 after every class – that are too informal or downright inappropriate.

Perhaps it has to do with the fact that our students are all foreigners,
and almost all from upper-class families who seem to have successfully
imbued them with very good manners, or perhaps with the supposition
we have heard whispered in the halls of academia, that our students
are intimidated by our intellect or attitude, but we actually get very
little email from students.

We encourage them to write, we really do. During the first
few days, we put together a mailing list so that we can communicate
with
the entire group in a single message, but we also write individual
notes to students on assignments, trips, student questions, issues
that come up in class, holiday greetings, etc. We tell them how much
we like getting updates from ex-students, holiday greetings, news on
academic milestones, anecdotes, etc. We emphasize the importance of
open lines of communication, the fact that they should look at their
professors as resources, the centrality of the skill of asking good
questions in learning a second language. We offer to help with homework,
provide personal advice on everything from combating culture shock
to putting together an appropriate winter wardrobe, assist in the process
of selecting and applying to American Universities, share
our wife’s
encyclopedic
knowledge
of Boston’s secret shopping gems and how to get to them via public
transportation. We promise to answer all emails, if not immediately,
at least within a reasonably short time frame.

It doesn’t make any difference. In the course of a 12-week
semester, with two or three classes of 12-16 students each, we probably
accumulate
a grand total of 4 or 5 emails total, mostly requests for letters of
recommendation to be included in their college and grad school applications,
letters we are prohibited from writing by the University itself until
they are no longer actively our students.

Currently, for example, after getting the semester off to what
we considered a roaring start, with a really great group of students,
all in their 20′s, from 9 different countries, but all bright, well-educated,
with the kind or urbane international good manners typical of the
emerging globalized ruling class, we sadly informed the lads and
lasses that the old Dowbrigade was going in for some serious plumbing
repairs, and followed up with some truly gruesome photos on the
class Wiki.

Were we plowed under by the resulting wave of sympathetic email?
Hardly – other than the three Latin ladies in the class (thanks Carolina,
Ana and Tatiana), not a peep.

The stakes are different for professors today than they were even a
decade ago, said Patricia Ewick, chairwoman of the sociology department
at Clark University in Massachusetts, explaining that "students
are constantly asked to fill out evaluations of individual faculty." Students
also frequently post their own evaluations on Web sites like rateyourprofessor.com
and describe their impressions of their professors on blogs.

Well, we have checked and so far none of the faculty in our
category (non-degree affiliated programs) have made it onto the
Rate Your
Professor type web sites. And although we have been asking
for 10 semesters now, only one young Korean woman had her own blog,
and it was only marginally a blog, and pretty lame to boot.

On the other hand, our students would have real reason to
worry, had we not sworn a solemn oath not to blog about specific
students,
past or present, even with the names and national origins changed
to protect the paying customers. It just isn’t worth the
potential problems, especially for someone who depends as much
on his main gig as the Dowbrigade does just now. After a near brush
with disaster for merely commenting on the case of a colleague
who web-published astonishingly inappropriate comments about students,
we have learned our lesson.

Once we are retired or win the lottery, however, all
bets are off. You can bet we are collecting all sorts of juicy
episodes
and anecdotes, ready for eventual incorporation into the loose
fabric of reminiscence and fantasy which constitutes our body
of work.

Christopher J. Dede, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
who has studied technology in education, said these e-mail messages showed
how students no longer deferred to their professors, perhaps because
they realized that professors’ expertise could rapidly become outdated.

Perhaps this is one of the hidden perqs of teaching
foreign students – they still defer to their teachers. Or maybe
its just
us.  In all of our 20 years teaching at major American universities
we have never had a student call us out or lack respect to our
face. God knows how they talk about us behind our backs.

We have had students lie to our faces, but without exception
they have been amateurs in the lying business, and it was usually
pretty easy to catch them in their lies and make them regret
thinking they were smarter than us in the first place. Plus,
so far we’ve managed to stay a step or two ahead of them on the
technological expertise stuff as well.

Students also use e-mail to criticize one another, Professor
Ahdieh said. He paraphrased this comment: "You’re spending
too much time with my moron classmates and you ought to be focusing
on those of us who are
getting the material."

This, now, is a real problem for the Dowbrigade, and here we are
being serious.  On the didactic level, we can justify spending
more time with those students who are honestly struggling with the
material.  The
Dowbrigade was once one of those students. It took us four years
to get through the two years of French we needed in High School to even
apply to the good colleges.

The kids who have that natural knack for languages digest the material
like hungry Sumos after a 10-day tournament. With a little guidance and
encouragement, they make steady, swift progress. But its the kids
who are working overtime, trying as hard as they can, and for whatever
reason having problems mastering some of basic language skills, these are
the kids we can relate to, and can help the most.

What frankly chaps our ass are the head cases, the "special" kids,
who think the rules don’t apply to them, that they don’t have to attend
class
regularly, or show up on time. There are ways to deprogram these
individuals, but it must be done carefully, and fully documented, and
it demands an inordinate amount of time. Unfortunately, this time comes
out of the extra hours a teacher has to dedicate to the kids who are coming
every day and doing everything else asked of them.

Quite frankly, this is a crime, these egotistical losers are robbing
time and degrading quality of services for the honest, hardworking majority,
who are paying top dollar and deserve a teacher’s full-time attention.

We seem to have strayed rather far from student-teacher email. The
bottom line here is that email itself is no longer a reliable or reputable
way
of doing business.  Between spam, lost messages, over-amped filters
and identity theft, it is impossible to depend on email for serious academic
obligations. Lately, we have started insisting that our students put the word ESSAY in all caps
in the subject line of any message containing an attachments, making it
easier to fish them out of the Junk Mail Box, but this is an imperfect
workaround.

We find it easier and more reliable to post a message to the class
Wiki, or create a short entry on the class blog, or even upload a change
to
the
static
class web page. Then the onus is on the student to check the site
indicated (which we write on the board in class), and they have no excuse
if they do not.

from the New York Times

An Israeli pilot is offering to take couples on flights around Tel
Aviv so that they can join the mile high club.

For less than $250, pilot Tamir Harpas will take adventurous lovers on
a 45 minute flight complete with wine, chocolates and condoms.

He will take just one couple at a time and the pair can get as amorous
as they like without fear of getting caught by air stewards.

However, there is one disadvantage – they are only separated from the pilot’s
cockpit by a curtain, reports newspaper Jediot Aharonot.

from Ananova

The Dowbrigade joined the Mile High Club at age 18 when we flew Icelandic
Air from New York to London for summer vacation between high school and
college with our first true lover, as well as
a couple of buddies, Joey Weiss and Scott Small. It was 1971, Jim Morrison
was getting ready to die in Paris, and we had great plans for spreading
American-style anarchy across a blank old world canvas.

Actually, on the flight over, we just managed to eke out our membership
from under one of those flimsy airline blankets, while on the flight
back we managed a much more robust application in the lavatory during
a late-night lull.

Meanwhile, we only lasted 3 days in London before getting kicked out
of the country for trying to smoke Turkish hashish from a Moroccan chillum
while huddled behind a wrought-iron bench in the Queen’s Garden across
from Buckingham Palace. Turns out we had arrived about an hour early
for the
changing
of the guard, so like typical American air-head hippies on a road trip,
we looked around for somewhere to get stoned before the big show.

It was windy, so we found a small copse of lilac bushes behind a bench
in this lovely and mostly empty garden across from the Palace. We were
so intent on getting those pesky pebbles of resinous richness lit that
we didn’t notice the Bobbies until they politely interrupted us to inquire
what exactly we were up to.

They were equally polite as they searched us, (to no avail. as the ever-omnivorous
Dowbrigade had instantly ingested the evidence), and took down our names
and passport numbers. We were politely informed that if we were found
anywhere within Great Britain after 24 hours had elapsed we would be
arrested and immediately detained.

Only 18 and already running out of countries. It wasn’t the first nation
to declare the Dowbrigade persona non grata, nor would it be the last.
Later that night we left for Amsterdam…

TEL
AVIV – Israel’s military has found the perfect vehicle for special operations
forces – the llama. After extensive tests, the uncomplaining
work-horse animals were found to easily out-perform donkeys. What’s more,
they need refuelling only every
other day.

Military sources said the Israel Army plans to use llamas for reconnaissance
and combat missions in enemy territory, Middle East Newsline reported.
They described the llama as ideal for special operations missions in Lebanon
against the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah.

"The llama is a quiet and disciplined animal that can carry huge
loads," a military source said. "Vehicles make noise and need
roads and fuel. We’ve tried donkeys and they are not suitable for such
missions."

The sources said the army has been training special forces to conduct
low-signature ground missions in enemy territory. In January, llamas
were employed in a special forces exercise in the Golan Heights.

The army plans to train a force of llamas to carry up to 100 kilograms
of equipment and supplies, the sources said. They said this would ease
the burden on troops and enable special operations forces to focus on
combat or reconnaissance.

The sources said donkeys also participated in the Golan Heights exercise.
They said the donkeys did not perform as well and required much more
food than llamas. The llamas could be fed once every other day.

Much more suitable than using them for Romantic
Encounters. They will blend right into the old Golan Heights or
the Zagros Mountains, an unnoticed touch of local color, who would
remember such a commonplace beast of burden.  Plus, they are cool
killers in a firefight. Remember, "Get your trauma with a llama"…..

from the
World Tribune

On February 16, 2006, the reformist Internet daily Rooz (www.roozonline.com)
reported for the first time that extremist clerics from Qom had issued
what the daily called "a new fatwa," which states that "the
shari’a does not forbid the use of nuclear weapons."

The following are excerpts from the Rooz report by Shahram Rafizadeh:(1)"When
the Entire World is Armed With Nuclear Weapons, it is Permissible to Use
These Weapons as a Counter-[Measure]"

"The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted
the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of the shari’a. Mohsen
Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President
Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using
nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. He stated that ‘in terms of the shari’a,
it all depends on the goal.’

from the Middle
East Media Research Institute

Shari’a does not forbid the use of nuclear weapons? As far as we know, neither does the Mishna….

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iranians love Danish
pastries, but when they look for the flaky dessert at the bakery they
now have to ask for "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad."

Bakeries across the capital were covering up their ads for Danish pastries
Thursday after the confectioners’ union ordered the name change in retaliation
for caricatures of the Muslim prophet published in a Danish newspaper.

"Given the insults by Danish newspapers against the prophet, as of
now the name of Danish pastries will give way to ‘Rose of Muhammad’ pastries," the
union said in its order.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (DB) – In retaliation for the
recently announced order from the Tehran Confectioners Union that henceforth
all
Danish pastries must be refered to as "Roses of the Prophet Muhammad.",
the Copenhagen City Council has unanamously passed a decree that all
Turkish Coffee must be sold as "YoMoZaHo Coffee". In
addition, all iterations of the classic arcade game "PacMan" must be
relabeled as "Freedom of Expression Man".

from AP News

WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Dick Cheney disclosed Wednesday that
he has the power to declassify sensitive government information, authority
that could set up a criminal defense for his former chief of staff, I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Cheney’s disclosure comes a week after reports that Libby testified under
oath he was authorized by superiors in 2003 to disclose highly sensitive
prewar information to reporters.

But in an interview on Fox News Channel, Cheney said there is an executive
order that gives the vice president, along with the president, the authority
to declassify information.

from AP News

An executive order, huh? That would be an order from the Cheif Executive.So
the President endowed himself with this power, and Cheney, too. A sort
of Power Sui Generis…..

Actress
Molly Sims is shown wearing a $30 million diamond bikini in this publicity
photograph released February 14, 2006. The bikini, designed by Susan
Rosen is made up of over 150 carats of D flawless diamonds. The bikini
is featured in the 2006 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue which is being
released February 14.

from Reuters

We
heard the news that the Vice President had shot his lobbyist friend
in a hunting accident while we were in the
ICU at a minor urban hospital, doped up but still in considerable pain. We
have yet to hear or read our first response anywhere else, despite the
plethora of one-liners engendered by this Imperial Faux Pas.

"Ex-Vice President Dan Quayle, upon learning of the
incident involving the current VP, commented, "That’s one invitation
we’re glad we turned down."

Conspiracy theorists see the opening moves of a plot
to force the resignation of the Vice President. Should this be the case,
we wonder if the plotters have thought about who will actually be running
the country should they succeed.