A fair and balanced compendium of spontaneous exclamations and excited utterances, with 22 entries on the front page.

And, now, Home of the YATSASS™ Reports

Yet Another True Story About Stupid Studies:

Posted 1:24 PM

Try as I might, from time to time, to dissuade young scholars from following in my footsteps, bright kids keep going to Harvard in hopes of gaining an "education." Here I go again...

One reason I hate Harvard is its unmittigated, unrestrained, shameless quest for yet more money. In the most recent Harvard Magazine runs an advertisement for the Harvard Endowment Campaign; y'know, the one where you can will your estate to the Crimson, instead of your kids? They boast a 22% return on their investments! 22%! I think I make about 2.2% on mine, but that's not the issue. Their endowment now stands at $22,000,000,000.00. That's Twenty Two Billion Dollars.

Despite that, no less than 12 times per year they solicit me for contributions. They even try by phone. What are they doing with all the money they already have?

It ain't on the dorms: the decrepit and dilapidated freshman "Yard" (where the kids have it part right: Thayer sucks, Holworthy sucks... but actually, they all suck...) the "prestigious "River Houses," (where you can keep an ice cube in a glass on your desk for several days in February) "The Quad" a/k/a Siberia, or the Dante's nightmare called "The Union Dorms."

It ain't on the food: Have you ever tasted a [no lie] Swedish Meatlike Ball? How about a "Mock Cheese Mockburger?"

It ain't on their stadium Yes, it may be the oldest permanent stadium in the western hemisphere, but that is no reason to force people to sit like sardines on cold concrete. No, I take that back: Sardines have it better, they have a backrest.

It ain't on their employees: they practically needed an armed uprising and military intervention to get those poor serfs a "living wage."

Maybe they're buying back all the Kruggerands we forced them to divest during massive student sit-ins in the 70's? More likely its Allston, Brighton and then Boston. (Hah! Once they own Boston they can really screw B.U.)

But most importantly, seeing as it costs $39,880 per year just for tuition, room and board, it ain't on learnin' the young-uns no readin', ritin' or 'rithmatic neither. Not when you have 20 and 22 year old grad students doing the teaching.

And that is my point, my complaint and my message: If you are looking to learn from teachers, Harvard is not your school. (And if you're not looking to learn from teachers, why are you applying to college? We do have libraries here in America. Go get a job, and come back when you're ready!) And, apparently, the school's president agrees with me.

In The Boston Globe, Thursday December 16, 2004, Alex Beam, on page D1, reviews a book by Richard Bradley, Harvard Rules: The Struggle for the Soul of the World's Most Powerful University. Granted, this is a third or fourth hand quote, but I understand you will see it in print when Richard Bradley's book is published by HarperCollins, in March. In response to a student's complaint about how little contact he had with professors, President Summers allegedly said:

Hmmm... Amherst. For 25 years I've thought that's where I should have gone. They even wanted me. Now I know I was right. And now, I see that my contempt for man's greatest university is well founded. It starts at its own very top.

Posted 1:10 PM

Posted 8:58 AM

Posted 9:57 AM

Please accept this gift certificate to Home Depot as a token of our appreciation. And don't forget, if duct tape won't fix it, superglue will. It was really nice of you to help W feel not so dumb.
		Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge indicates how much thought he put into his anti-terror recommendations to the public, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Posted 10:13 AM

Band Aid, 20 years ago, was the greatest things that rock and roll brought the world since Elvis (Presley & Costello) and the Beatles. Bob Geldoff and Midge Ure were brilliant, wrote a great tune, raised tons of cash, andt ignited Bono to humanitarian action, and the world is a better place (hard to believe) than it would have been without them and their efforts.

I recently had the opportunity to see the original Do They Know Its Christmas? and the 20 year anniversary remake.

The original still gives me chills when I hear it, and the video is pure joy. I was even happy to see George Michael and Boy George! Not to mention that I could still recognize almost all of the people in the video.

Now, as for the remake:Who the hell are those people?

Maybe I'm just too out oof date, but I didn't know a single soul in that entire production, outside of Bono, who was brought back to recreate his just thank God its them instead of you but sadly, without the same amazing effect as in the first version. But, if this new version were really populated with the same caliber of recording artists as the original (George Michael, Boy George, Sting, Bananarama, Bono, Phil Collins, Duran Duran, Paul Young) wouldn't we have seen Britney, Jessica, Christina, Justin, Andre 3000... but all we got was Coldplay, Dido, Joss Stone(!) and a bunch of whozethem? (Yeah, ok, we're teased with glimpses of a left handed hofner bass a couple times and the Sir Paul is seen playing... in isolation ) And, sadly but predictably, they've added rap music [sic] to the song. I guess some would call it modernizing; I call it a desecration and perhaps an actionable droit morale claim.

Well, I hope it makes some money for starving people. But by 2004, one would hope that Western Europe would realize that most of Africa is not Christian and could not care less whether or not it was Christmas!

They are Muslims, and they observe Ramadan, which concluded on November 13th. Did the do-gooders know it was Ramadan-time at all? Without accepting or condoning his methods in the least: People, this is part of what Osama is beefing about...

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