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Lessig is a man of reason. I saw a presentation he gave which dealt with the black/white issues, but also got into the murky grey. Lots of good solid suggestions that can take the whole debate forward. I hope he gets elected officials and music industry people to listen.

Great; because I don't think people -- and especially not school administrators -- should smack kids around as a matter of course I'm a liberal in your eyes?

Here's a clue: violence as a means of getting people to do what you want is not common sense. It's facism. I don't have kids yet, but when I do you can be damn sure I don't want some vice principle laying a f'ing hand on them.

You're on the lunatic fringe. I'm not in school, but for argument's sake, if I were, how would I have had a chance to "make" any kind of mess for you to clean up? Take a deep breath and come back to the world of adult conversation, please.

I think it is perfectly acceptable to put someone that knows all about the university, and loves it at the top of the list.

Hard to argue with that, but what does this have to do with where your parents went to school? Newcomers can be passionate about A&M too, I imagine.

What criteria would you like to use after grades and SAT?

Oh, I'm a romantic who believes in things like personal essays, a portfolio of work, statements of purpose, and actual conversations with passionate admissions people. I think looking at family background is appropriate in some cases. It was pointed out to me that A&M gives some breaks to people who's parents didn't finish high school, which seems like a noble thing to do.

This is probably an unpopular thing to say, but honestly I'd like favorable treatment for people from poorer economic backgrounds and recent immagrants too. I see it all as part of bringing the historically less fortunite into the great circle of opprtunity, creating a wider base of smart, motivated, connected people who can help the world be a better place. A little romantic, perhaps, but I've seen it work, so...

It's not that you need to paddle that much, but failing to recognize its utility in some cases is a 'red flag' for where we have gone wrong wrt raising kids.

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. I don't believe that physically beating people is necessary to have a well ordered society, and in most cases it is counterproductive because inevitably that power is abused by petty tyrants, doing damage to the innocent and creating real trouble resistance.

Where do you get the silly idea that respect and physical discipline are mutually exclusive?

They're not, but corporal punishment represents a different kind of power dynamic between an administration and students (or parents and children). Corporal punishment sends the message that students should obey to avoid pain and discomfort. A better way to create discipline is to have an administration which students understand is furthering their interests, and respect out of their own enlightened self-interest.

What is unusual is our obsession with trying to "justify" authority rather than simply saying that authority eg of school officials can and should deserve respect as authority figures.

I couldn't disagree more. This is what seperates us from the facists, friend. The belief in authority should be respected "just because" is no good; subservance to power without reason or rationale is dangerous, and not an indeal I think we should indoctrinate our youth with.

It's [legacy] just part of the university, and it's a very integral part of what makes A&M, A&M.

And aristocratic traditions were what made Europe Europe for most of the Dark Ages.

Just because something is traditional, and you're personally a beneficiary of that tradition, doesn't make it right.

The reason we were able to attend and graduate is because it was our hometown university-- we could live at home and get a degree. Does that sound like "aristocracy" to you?

No, I wasn't addressing the fact that it's a hometown university.

Giving preference to people who's parents went to a school over people who just moved to town or who are from elsewhere is unamerican. It creates a select group based on family lines who are more apt to get something than people outside those family lines. That's aristocracy. Just because A&M isn't Yale doesn't make the merits of the system different.

So, they're bashing A&M for doing something that is pretty routine.

But just because everyone's doing it doesn't make it right. I was the first in my family to go to college, and while I understand the university's position with regards to squeezing more money out of alumni, I find legacy admissions to be nothing but aristocracy.

It's why the end of corporal punishment has inevitably led to this.

Whoa buddy; so you really think bringing back the paddle is the solution to the problems of modern education? I can't go there with you. Respect and consensus trumps pain and force every time.

As for rebelliousness, you're right that it's not an innate human quality in all situations, but it is a natural reaction to force. Force engenders response. My experience of public school was an environment that required you to do a lot of things that were patently unnecessary; this created a desire to assert ones self in response.

And in my experience, especially again wrt public school, I was smarter than a lot of the adults, or at least it appeared that way given the restrictions placed on how we were allowed to interact. I feel that high school is full of adults who never realized their full potential, and students can sense this.

parents must bring them and pick them up, parents must meet with the teachers any time the teacher requests, the kids must wear uniforms. If the parent doesn't wish to do any of this --- then the kid is out of school.

And that's where the real hard questions start. How do you encourage good parenting, and what do you do with the kids who just weren't lucky enough to get it?

I wouldn't like anyone sleeping in their car in my neighborhood. This is not a good thing. I'd call the cops.

Oh, usually migrants sleep in cars way out in fields and on gravel roads. I know soybeans aren't hand-picked, but there's still a fair amount of tedious hand-labor that's involved.

Even though he goes maybe once a week and everybody knows him, they still search his truck from bumper to bumper complete with mirrors under the frame. He says it doesn't bother him one bit.

That's good to hear. However, the work of David Orrik (thak you google!) had to do with armed response to frontal terrorist assault, not truck bombs. The nightmare scenario is 5 or 10 armed bad guys shoot their way into the control room and trigger a big meltdown.

Oh man; vocabulary moment. I should have said "cynical." Mea culpa.

Well, maybe not now; but it's hard to believe he didn't have a hand in how they used the buildup to the invasion to pull off the unprecidented 2002 victories.

Go to some left-wing nut site if you really belive that crap

It's not nutso; it was f'in brilliant politics. They had the dems between a rock and a hard place, running scared as a party, and they used the issue to hammer down congressional seats nationwide.

Sadly, this is also the case at a lot of Nuke plants around the country. There was a guy -- ex-SEAL -- I remember hearing about who did safety consulting for the govt. and was able to stage "mock-takeovers" at nearly half the facilities that agreed to try his program. Needless to say, after the first round, most other facilities opted out of the program. Hopefully we'll get some accountability on thse things nationwide once the DHS starts to gel.

I know we've got to get off the Saudi Teat for energy, but post 9-11 nuke plants in general seem like more trouble than they're worth.

Thx; I've been reading the news and writing the occasional letter to the editor for a while, but since my house got DSL I've found there's a whole new world online. The back and forth is like good dinner conversation anytime of the day. ;)

I'm totaly mystified by the Laruche people... they have seemingly normal looking young men and women with tables on a lot of college campuses. Where do they come from? Why do they do it? Where does all the money they raise (apparently a couple mil a year) go?

Expectations matter.

If you tread kids like criminals, they're more likely to act like criminals, unless you come down on them so hard it breaks their natural rebeliousness. The problem is when you try this, you inevitably run into a few real hard cases who only get worse when you impose rules. I was kind of like that back in my day; luckily I avoided serious trouble long enough to make it to more stable ground.

Rove has nothing to do with decision making regarding Iraq, logan.

Well, maybe not now; but it's hard to believe he didn't have a hand in how they used the buildup to the invasion to pull off the unprecidented 2002 victories.

I'm glad to see everyone agree's we've got to own up to our responsibility here though. I'm just a little more sanguine about what kinds of compromises people will make when re-election is on the line.

He's so opposed to the war, but he's afraid now that we'll extricate ourselves from our commitment to the war too soon?

But we can't leave Iraq, right? I mean; if it dissolves into civil war and becomes Iran part deux, it's a problem. I worry that Rove will make a calculation in the summer and pull back too far in order to tie up the election; one step forward, two steps back and all.

Well, I suppose I was thinking about the money-flow from the mexican point of view. For most families, this is the best opportunity they have, so I have a hard time faulting them for trying.

[migrant worker jobs] encourages the Mexican light skinned to send what they consider undesirables north of the border.

Is there a color barrier in mexico? I've heard there's some class stratification based on who is more abboriginal (sp?), but I didn't know it had to do with skin color.