A unanimous three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has held that Colorado's refusal to provide scholarships to otherwise eligible students who attend accredited Colorado colleges deemed "pervasively sectarian" is unconstitutional. The decision reverses a prior U.S. District Court ruling.

Colorado shifted a significant share of the money that it provides to higher education from direct institutional support to student based scholarships for students who attend colleges in Colorado, in order to circumvent state constitutional limitations that would otherwise treat tuitition money as a form of tax revenue subject to state constitutional revenue limitations designed to control state funding.

The program allowed students to use the scholarship money at private as well as public institutions, but did not allow it to be used at "prevasively sectarian" institutions.

Employing those criteria, the state defendants have decided to
allow students at Regis University, a Roman Catholic institution run by the
Society of Jesus, and the University of Denver, a Methodist institution, to receive state scholarships, but not students at CCU or Naropa University, a Buddhist institution.

Colorado Christian University cried foul and won, and an "appropriate remedy" will be formulated by the District Court on remand.

Colorado could seek review by an en banc panel of all the judges in the 10th Circuit, or could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Neither option, however, is likely to happen before the 2008-2009 school year begins.

Earlier this year, a state trial court held that another key piece of Colorado's education funding program, for K-12 education, was invalid as a result of state constitutional violations. That program effectively reduced state funding for school districts which had TABOR waivers to allow them to collect property tax revenue increases as a result of valuation changes, which were not being fully utilized by those districts, and used the reduced state funding for other K-12 funding goals. That decision is being appealed at this time to the Colorado Supreme Court and could be rendered before the start of the new school year.

The combination of the two court defeats of TABOR driven education funding programs leaves Colorado's system of funding public education at all levels in limbo. It is still possible that a special session may need to be called to fix the mess.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Some time ago, Garth at the Physics Forums compared a number of proposed alternatives of General Relativity, and General Relativity itself, to the preliminary result of the Gravity Probe B experiment, which experimentally tested the accuracy of General Relativity.

Only those theories which come very close to predicting the same results as General Relativity have survived the test of experiment, although it is still possible the the experimental results could, if refined, falisfy the predictions of both General Relativity and many of its proposed alternatives.

Final results are not expected until 2010 and are contingent upon additional funding (the project is about $4 million short and has spent about $800 million to date). Current preliminary results has quite a high margin of error due to various experimental issues.

Garth's post from April 20, 2007 stated (with links to papers regarding all but the first two theories):

the first results have verified the GR geodetic prediction to 1% but there is no handle on the frame-dragging prediction, basically because unexpected signals so far swamp it, except for 'glimpses'.

By the end of the year the correct removal of these effects will give a robust reading to both precessions.

The running now stands:

1. Einstein's General Relativity(GR)
2. Brans-Dicke theory (BD)
3. Barber's Self Creation Cosmology (SCC),
4. Moffat's Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory (NGT),
5. Hai-Long Zhao's Mass Variance SR Theory (MVSR),
6. Stanley Robertson's Newtonian Gravity Theory (NG),
7. Junhao & Xiang's Flat Space-Time Theory (FST).
8. R. L. Collin's Mass-Metric Relativity (MMR) and
9. F. Henry-Couannier's Dark Gravity Theory (DG).
10. Alexander and Yunes' prediction for the Chern-Simons gravity theory (CS).
11. Kris Krogh's Wave Gravity Theory (WG)
12. Hongya Liu & J. M. Overduin prediction of the Kaluza-Klein gravity theory (KK).
13. Kerr's Planck Scale Gravity: now accepted for publication Predictions of Experimental Results from a Gravity Theory (PSG)

The following are still in the running:

GPB Geodetic precession (North-South)
1. GR = 6.6144 arcsec/yr.
2. BD = 6.6144 arcsec/yr. where now >60.
4. NGT = 6.6144 - a small correction arcsec/yr.
6. NG = 6.6144 arcsec/yr.
9. DG = 6.6144 arcsec/yr.
10. CS = 6.6144 arcsec/yr.
11. WG = 6.6144 arcsec/yr.
12. KK = (1 + b/6 - 3b2 + ...) 6.6144 arcsec/yr. where 0 < b < 0.07.

We await the GPB gravitomagnetic frame dragging precession (East-West) result.

1. GR = 0.0409 arcsec/yr.
2. BD = 0.0409 arcsec/yr.
4. NGT = 0.0409 arcsec/yr.
6. NG = 0.0102 arcsec/yr.
9. DG = 0.0000 arcsec/yr.
10. CS = 0.0409 arcsec/yr. + CS correction
11. WG = 0.0000 arcsec/yr.
12. KK = 0.0409 arcsec/yr.

Those that have fallen by the wayside:

3. SCC = 4.4096 arcsec/yr.
5. MVSR = 0.0 arcsec/yr.
7. FST = 4.4096 arcsec/yr.
8. MMR = -6.56124 arcsec/yr.
13. PSG = 0.0000 arcsec/yr/

He was the man behind SCC, and was brutally honest in accepting the falsification provided by GP-B (not be daunted he revised the theory to fit the data in short order).

As he more fully explains the data from GP-B on page 14 of that thread:

Just to make clear what the present situation is:

(mas = milliarcsec)
The geodetic N-S precession is predicted by GR to be - 6606 mas/yr, however there is a solar geodetic precession N-S component of + 7 mas/yr and the proper motion of IM Pegasi +28 mas/yr to take into account, resulting in a net expected N-S precession of -6571 1 mas/yr.

The frame-dragging E-W precession is predicted by GR to be -39 mas/yr, the solar geodetic precession E-W component of -16 mas/yr and the proper motion of IM Pegasi -20 mas/yr to include, resulting in a net expected N-S precession of -75 1 mas/yr.

From pages 20 and 21 of Francis Everitt's April APS talk, we find: A series of error ellipses on the N-S v E-W precession plot with centres respectively at (-6584 60, -83 22 mas/yr) June 2006, (-6597 17, -92 15 mas/yr) December 2006, (-6595 12, -98 7 mas/yr) March 2007 and (-6603 8, -98 7 mas/yr) March 2007.

It was this last reading for the geodetic precession that Francis Everitt reported at his April APS talk. If we also include that 'glimpse' of the E-W precession as well we have net values of:
(-6603 8, -98 7 mas/yr)
whereas GR predicts:
(-6571 1, -75 1 mas/yr).

In other words the actual readings are larger than GR predicts by 32 mas/yr in geodetic precession and 23 mas/yr in frame-dragging precession.

However, they reported an overall error, which is still being reduced, caused by residual gyro-to-gyro inconsistencies due to incomplete modeling of ~ 100 mas/yr.

This renders the present geodetic 'glimpse' as being consistent with GR to within about 1%, whereas the frame-dragging precession is at present swamped by noise.

Page 17 of that thread notes a December 2007 update of the GP-B data:

Einstein expectation: -6571 +- 1*
4-gyro result (1 sigma) for 85 days
(12 Dec 04 -- 4 Mar 05) -6632 +- 43

The December 2007 update puts experimental results 1.4 standard deviations greater than General Relativity predicts, with partial data. This is still reasonably close. Random chance calls for results within 1 standard deviation about 68% of the time and within 2 standard deviations about 95% of the time, so this isn't a horribly quirky result, although it also isn't as confirming as one might hope if one wanted an unequivocal GR confirmation.

Why would anyone even bother rethinking a well established theory like General Relativity? As a paper described in the thread notes:

[T]here are important reasons to question the validity of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Despite the beauty and simplicity of general relativity, our present understanding of the fundamental laws of physics has several shortcomings. The continued inability to merge gravity with quantum mechanics, and recent cosmological observations that lead to the unexpected discovery of the accelerated expansion of the universe (i.e., “dark energy”) indicate that the pure tensor gravity field of general relativity needs modification.

Some theorists believe that modifications to General Relativity could also explain some or all of the phenomena described as "dark matter" which require matter of a type fundamentally different from known "baryonic" matter which has never actually observed to fit the experimental data.

Dark matter and dark energy are both phenomena that are observed only at very long ranges where gravitational fields are very weak. Many theorists think that a quantum formulation of general relativity could produce subtle differences from General Relativity, which is a classical theory, rather than a quantum one, to produce subtle empirical differences from classical General Relativity.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The Iraqi government wants troops out of Iraq on a timeline similar to that of Presidential candidate Obama, a fact highlighted in Obama's visit to Iraq this week. It is hard to argue that a long term U.S. troop presence is appropriate when the Iraqi civilian government whose invitation we claim provides the legal basis for our presence in the country wants us to withdraw.

Meanwhile, Iraqi provincial elections look likely to be delayed until after the U.S. Presidential elections.

These elections have the potential to shift power from the central government to provincial and/or regional governments. Provincial and regional governments would be less prone to deadlock than the Iraqi parliament. They would not have supermajority requirements to pass legislation, as the national parliament does in an effort to secure multi-ethnic consensus, and they would have more ethnically homogeneous representatives.

Provincial elections are likely to produce ethnically homogeneous groups of elected officials because the Iraqi civil war in the aftermath of of U.S. invasion has segregated the country on ethnic lines. Predominantly Sunni areas are more so now. Predominantly Shi'ite areas are more so now. Kurdish isolation and autonomy have remained. Most mixed neighborhoods have seen the minority in their larger region flee. Provinces that still have ethnically mixed populations, like Baghadad, increasingly have strictly ethnically segregated neighborhoods.

The effect of the last round of national elections was to shut Sunnis out of the political process. They are a minority nationally, so they have no hope of ever out voting a Kurdish-Shi'ite or unilateral Shi'ite parliamentary majority, although supermajority requirements give their representatives a limited veto power of certain kinds of legislation if they can hold together. Existing Sunni representatives in the Iraqi parliament also got there by denying a boycott of the elections which the vast majority of Sunnis in Sunni dominated regions joined, a fact that limits their legitimacy as leaders for Iraqi Sunnis.

New provincial elections could establish a class of legitimate Iraqi Sunni political leaders to replace the current crop of Sunni parliamentarians, and could give Iraqi Sunni's political power in the provinces where they are a majority, provinces that are now home to most Iraqi Sunnis in the country. This would give Iraqi Sunnis a stake in supporting the existing governmental structure, rather than undermining it with continued military insurgency efforts. A massive decentralization of governmental power could make it easier for governments to carry out their functions without being hamstrung by pervasive political infighting that infects even basically non-partisan issues.

New elections and the formation of regional governments through the merger of some of these regions, also form the basis for a possible "hard" (i.e. true independence) or "soft" (i.e. autonomy with a weak central government) partition of Iraq, with a Southeastern Shi'ite autonomous region, a Northern Kurdish autonomous region, a Western Sunni autonomous region or province, and a few central provinces that would not be as homogeneous but would also have fewer ethnic groups with representatives than the national parliament, something that would presumably make multi-ethnic agreements easier to reach.

For McCain, who already embarassed himself this week by calling for increased security on the non-existent "Iraq-Pakistan border" on morning daytime TV, this may deny him an opportunity to show that Iraq is really making progress as a result of the Iraq War which is supports unconditionally. In November of 2008, provincial elections will be only another empty promise that may or may not actually come into being. Unless Americans change their minds on Iraq and come around to McCain's point of view, his prospects at the polls are dim.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

A switched at birth baby case produced a lawsuit in 2002, that was dismissed, IMHO rightly, because it was not brought within the applicable two year from discovery statute of limitations. The births took place in 1946. (Under Colorado law, a statute of repose, which runs from the date of the wrongful act whether or not the mistake is discovered, would have made the issue much more clear.) Damages would also have been very difficult to measure.

But the case would be a precious prize for a psychological case study, and would make a great book. The case also could have impliciations that are not dated in legal contexts other than a suit for money damages against the doctors and hospital that screwed it up.

The case also raises questions about whether laws other than suits for money damages against hospitals should be changed now that paternity can easily be determined with certainty, something not possible in most cases before the 1990s, and about what damages, if any, should be awarded in a timely brought switched at birth case.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

It is ironic that prohibition was ended in proceedings held in December, 1933, in Utah, which is now and probably was then, the dryest state in the union, since Mormons, the predominant religous grouping in the state, aren't supposed to drink alcohol.

It is proof for the cynics, comparable to that of the various expansions of the franchise, that political movements can overcome stereotypes and narrow self-interest.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The plutoid formerly known as "Easter Bunny" (and also as 2005 FY9) has been officially renamed Makemake (pronounced MAH-kay MAH-kay), a Polynesian word, "which is the name for the god of fertility and also the name of the creator of humanity in the mythology of the South Pacific Island of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island."

Offical names for Plutoids must have a mythological origin. It joins previously named plutoids Pluto and Eris, and previously named dwarf planet Ceres. Meremere is the largest object in the solar system named for a non-Western mythological figure.

Most known plutoids were discovered by astronomer Mike Brown and his team. His website notes that the smallest round satellite in the solar system has a diameter of about 400 km, and that the smallest round non-satellite in the solar system, Ceres, is about 900 km in diameter, which, he suggested are the empirical cutoffs for icy and rocky bodies, respectively, to form spheres with their own gravity.

Prior to today, Meremere was the largest object in the solar system without an official common name, and without formal recognition as a dwarf planet or satellite.

Some of the other leading contenders in the queue to be recognized as dwarf planets, with their diameters in kilometers, approximate locations and their official or unofficial common names, where available, are:

Santa (Posible Dwarf Planet Kuiper Belt) 1,500
2002 TC302 (Possible Dwarf Planet ca. Kuiper Belt) under 1,200
Sedna (Possible Dwarf Planet ca. Kuiper Belt) 1,180-1,800
Quaoar (Possible Dwarf Planet Kuiper Belt) 989-1346
Orcus (Possible Dwarf Planet Trans-Neptune) 880-1880

Wikipedia has a more complete list.

Ceres, in the asteroid belt, is the only dwarf planet which is not a plutoid, although some modern researchers believe that Ceres may have once been a plutoid before being catapulted by gravity into the inner solar system during the process by which the gas giants took their current positions in the solar system. It is much larger than its three nearest rivals in size in the asteroid belt, which together with Ceres make up about half of the mass of the main asteroid belt.

Other large bodies in the solar system include the Sun, eight full fledged planets, and fifteen dwarf planet sized or larger satellites of planets. Another blogger more completely summarizes (wiht the inaccuracy of counting Ceres as a plutoid) the state of affairs as follow:

For those keeping count, the official tally for our system is now four stony planets, four gas giants, four plutoids, around 180 moons, 1000 Kuiper belt objects, 3500 comets, and 10,000 asteroids with about seven more plutoid candidates under consideration and a few dozen believed to exist.

Objects that are much smaller than Orcus are unlikely to become dwarf planets, as opposed to comets or asteroids, because they tend to lack sufficient gravity to compress themselves into a roughly spherical shape, which is part of the definition of a dwarf planet.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Not a single law professor in Colorado blogs according to the most comprehensive census of law professor bloggers in existence.

Those of us outside academe will continue to pick up the slack.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Using private collection firms to collect unpaid taxes isn't working. Contract oversight is poor and the approach isn't increasing tax collections as intended.

Perhaps there is some manner in which the federal government bureacracy is regulated, but the private sector is not, which makes tax collection less effective. For example, perhaps private debt collectors have more compensation package flexibility allowing them to give their employees greater incentives to increase collections. If that is the problem, it is within the power of Congress to change to offending rules while keeping tax collectors within the I.R.S.

On the other hand, if private debt collectors are no more effective at collecting taxes than government employees, which appears to be the case in real life, there is no reason to use private debt collectors or their methods.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The fewer run-ins with the law you have had before, the less likely you are to reoffend, according to a May 2004 U.S. Sentencing Commission report:

The analysis [of empirical data on re-offending] delineates recidivism risk for offenders with minimal prior criminal history and shows that the risk is lowest for offenders with the least experience in the criminal justice system. Offenders with zero criminal history points have lower recidivism rates than offenders with one or more criminal history points. Even among offenders with zero criminal history points, offenders who have never been arrested have the lowest recidivism risk of all.

Federal courts deal with many criminal defendants with little criminal history:

The annual proportion of federal offenders with zero criminal history points is substantial. In fiscal year 2001, more than four out of every ten federal offenders (42.2%) had zero criminal history points for their Chapter Four computation. This proportion was even higher in fiscal year 1992, when nearly half (49.9%) of citizen offenders had zero criminal history points.

About 29.8% had no prior arrests or convictions, 8.4% had been arrested but not convicted, and 1.5% had only minor prior criminal convictions, in 1992. Defendants with no criminal record are much more like to be women, to be white, to be older than 41 years old, less likely to have used drugs, more likely to be employed, more likely to be married, more likely to be high school graduates or have some college, and are more likely to have dependents. Non-violent drug, fraud and theft offenses are the most common charges, making up about three quarters of cases, with fraud and theft much more common than for those with prior offense records. There is no significant difference in mental illness rates.

The recidivism rate of those with no criminal history points is 11.7%, for those with 1 criminal history point is 22.6% and for those with more criminal history is 36.5%. Within those with no criminal history points:

Among the potential first offender groups, group A [no prior convictions or arrrests] has the lowest primary recidivism rate at 6.8 percent, followed by offender group C [minor convictions, no prior arrests] with a rate of 8.8 percent. Offenders in group B have a recidivism rate of 17.2 percent, [prior arrests but not prior convictions] which is more than twice the rate of group A and nearly twice the rate for group C. Even with the comparatively higher recidivism rate, group B’s rate is still several percentage points lower than offenders in the remaining zeroes group (21.7%) [zero criminal history points but some prior conviction for a non-minor matter].

One must ask, however: Is it appropriate to consider a statistically important difference between offenders who have and have not been arrested before, with no prior convictions, as an arrest not producing a conviction doesn't have any formal legal importance and is subject to manipulation without judicial branch review? This issue is akin to the issue of considering uncharged and acquitted conduct at sentencing.

The answer matters a great deal to many non-violent offenders with little criminal history, who make up a large share of all defendants in federal court. Serious state court criminal cases tend to have fewer first time offenders, fewer white collar cases and fewer drug cases on a percentage basis.

Of course, since these offenders tend to get the lightest sentences anyway, adjustments in this sentencing regime don't have the greatest fiscal impact on the system, although leniency with this group may be the least politically painful. The harder policy question is how to deal with offenders who a chronically recidivist, but commit not very serious crimes -- repeat minor drug dealers and small dollar amount thieves, for example. In those cases the cost of the crimes committed may be small relative to the cost of incarceration.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The Fox News network has never had much credibility. A blog statement from a Fox New legal analyst, Lis Wiehl, that the New York Court of Appeals is the second highest court in New York State. One would expect better from a Harvard Law School educated law professor. Indeed, given that the post is in a blog, over which one assumes that the author has editorial control, rather than an article, where a less informed editor might insert an inaccurate correction, it is even worse.

The New York Court of Appeals is, of course, the highest court in the State of New York equivalent to the Supreme Court in most states, while the "Supreme Court" in New York State is the trial court of general jurisdiction, and the intermediate court of appeal in New York State is the "Supreme Court, Appellate Division" (with certain quirky exceptions).

A lay person usually wouldn't know this, but a legal analysis on TV news should. It is right in the Bluebook, the standard guide to legal citation in law review articles, that every law student involved in a law review, and every law professor, learns cold.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Some newly minted lawyers are paid very well. Another cluster are paid rather poorly. There is a dearth of new lawyers in the middle (annual pay from about $65,000 to $125,000 a year):

Half of the graduates make less than the $62,000 per year median--but remarkably, there is no clustering there. Over a quarter (27.5%) make between $40k-$55k per year, and another quarter (27.8%) have an annual salary of $100K plus.

If the chart were a flipbook of the last twenty years, the first mode would be relatively stationary, barely tracking inflation, while the second mode would be moving quickly to the right--i.e., the salary wars. In fact, because of the recent jump to $160K in the major markets, the second mode has already moved even more to the right.

A well done graphic displays the situation.

The law blogger posting this analysis notes that:

There is a lot of commodity corporate legal work on there; why not bow out of the salary wars, ratchet down the hours to 1800, take work on a flat fee arrangement, focus on better/faster service (thus increasing margins on the flat fees), and literally feast on the human capital willing to take a job in the "death valley" range (i.e., ~$80,000 per year), especially if the hours are sane. The client gets quality and cost predictability, and the well-managed firm can make a lot of money. This is a great opportunity for a firm willing to rethink its business model.

I couldn't bear to work in a law factory like that, but I can see how many people would enjoy it.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The Republican National Committee is threatening to use trademark law to prevent Cafe Press from using "GOP" and a patriotically themed elephant in political paraphenalia.

Given the political nature of the speech involved, and the widespread use of these icons to describe their party, I doubt that this threat will go anywhere. But, it does illustrate, once again, the use of business torts for illegitimate purposes of intimidation.

Few, if any, of the products, which are mostly satires and quips, show any sign of a claim that they are affiliated with the RNC or one of its affiliates.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

There are indications that the U.S. Navy has given up on a prompt replacement of its destroyers and cruisers. The Zumalt DDG-1000 was so profoundly over budget and beyond the mission of existing destroyers (it was really more of a battleship) that the program has been stopped after only a couple of prototypes. Enthusiasm for a new class of cruisers (possibly of two designs, one for missile defense and another for more traditional aircraft carrier escort roles) has likewise waned. Instead, existing ships will be refurbished and kept in service:

The refurb policy will cost about $200 million per destroyer (and 20-25 percent more for the cruisers). Normally, these ships get one refurb during their 30 year lives. This not only fixes lots of things that have broken down or worn out (and been patched up), but installs lots of new technology. A second refurb is expected to add another 5-10 years. . . . the navy wants to install the "smart ship" type automation (found in civilian ships for decades) that will enable crew size to be reduced. The "smart ship" gear also includes better networking and power distribution. In effect, the ship would be rewired. This could reduce the crew size by 20-30 percent (current destroyers have a crew of 320, with the cruisers carrying 350). In addition to considerable cost savings (over $100,000 a year per sailor), a smaller crew takes up less space, enabling the smaller crew to have more comfortable living quarters.

This is a good move. The U.S. Navy's blue sea surface fleet has few real rivals, yet is vulnerable to submarine and advanced missile threats. The current fleet is more a product of World War II driven backward thinking in the Reagan era than actual military need. Taking on enemy surface ships is generally something better done by our own submarines, missiles and aircraft. Yes, there is a place for some robust U.S. naval force in the U.S. military. But given the immense cost of building ships of new designs, and the relatively modest benefits associated with doing so, pausing this effort makes sense. The Navy's scarce warship procurement funds are better spent keeping the Littoral Combat Ship program, which fills an important gap in existing capabilities, on track.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

One of the facts of modern warfare, which has gone into the debate over whether the U.S. military should retain the M4 carbine, and the NATO standard small caliber ammunity it uses, is that a very large share of all shots fired in anger by the military real life are fired at short range, where even pistols have tolerable accuracy. This is also true of most shots fired in anger in civilian life, by criminals, by citizens engaged in self-defense, and by law enforcement. You can count on your fingers the number of criminal snipers in the past decade, and they make national news; SWAT teams fire guns a long range more often, but still not very often.

This is not a technical necessity. Even a standard assault rifle, found the world over in both affluent and non-affluent nations, has remarkable accuracy at a very long range. Even longer range sniper weapons have been around since World War II. Guided artillery ordinance and "smart bombs" also exist and can hit targets with accuracy anywhere in a metropolitan area.

Generally speaking, of course, it is far safer for the person firing a weapon to do so at long range than up close and personal.

Someone looking into their crystal ball forty years ago might have expected war to have become an impersonal, cold blooded, long range affair by now. In air to air combat, this is precisely what has happened in the modern era. But it hasn't happened on the ground.

Two main factors seem to have prevented this from happening. First, combatants know that it is foolish to fight in open territory and seek places where they have cover, like urban areas and ambushes. Second, identifying someone as a friend or foe, and getting into a situation that makes clear that it is necessary to fire, often happens only within close visual or auditory range.

There may also be a third factor. Perhaps soldiers on the ground, by virtue of training and instinct, simply feel wrong about killing in cold blood at long range.

At any rate, the lesson seems to be that sometimes technology doesn't change everything.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act's pre-emption provisions were overkill on day one and continue to do grievous harm to employees of American businesses. The linked blog post discussed a bad faith denial of life insurance benefits in which ERISA played a part. This has long needed a legislative fix, but the issue has proved more complex than Congress is willing to handle.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

A federal appeals court has held that a momentary and allegedly accidental display of a woman's nipple at a Superbowl game does not justify a $550,000 fine. The Court held that the fine was an unannounced and arbitrary deviation from long standing FCC policy.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Why write a blog post when someone else has already done it for me?

When I saw the giant biillboard on 6th and Speer advertising "DENVER'S NEW INDEPENDENT ALTERNATIVE RADIO," I couldn't reprogram my car radio's preset fast enough. Alternative? Independent? It's about freakin' time!

What a gyp.

I'm not really sure what this station is an alternative TO, since it's basically playing the same music you'd hear on 93.3. I'm also not sure what they mean by "independent." Maybe they're not owned by Big Brother... oops, I mean Clear Channel. I have no clue.

Anyhow, where I was hoping to get some cool Indie-Rock by bands I could l later say that I'd heard of, "way before YOU did," I just got the same old blah. . . .

Not painful, but also nothing I'd really consider "Alternative" or "Independent." Probably worth three stars, but I'm docking them one more for two reasons:

1. They have a morning show. Nothing irks me more than contrived "witty banter" in the morning. Just play some damn music and shutthehellup.
2. Every single commercial break leads off with an ad for Scalp-Meds, so you can regrow your balding spot, ol' chap. Kind of makes me wonder who they think their target market actually is.

Seriously. The morning show is made up of a bunch of dorks who belong on an easy listening channel, the reception is full of static, the mix of songs played is tolerable but neither terribly independent nor alternative, and while it is an improvement upon the failed format of its predecessor, "The Martini," (which, at least, was different, even if it wasn't my thing), 101.5 FM is nothing to write home about. Why listen when 93.3 FM and 105.9 FM are doing essentially the same thing, but better, with less static? Indeed, 101.5 is less alternative and independent in its playlists than 93.3 FM (which has positioned itself as the most modern and alternative rock station in Denver on the FM dial) and is less well executed (but more similar in play list) to 105.9 FM (a glorified top 40 station).

If they'd advertised themselves in a way that better represented what they were doing, maybe something like "a modern music station you won't be ashamed to play in front of your kids," I might not have had such a visceral negative reaction. After all, history has not been kind to bolder experiments in Denver radio like a Reggatone channel (which my wife loved), and a Techno channel (which I was addicted to). Nielson establishes clearly that Denver radio audiences aren't interested in pushing the envelope. But this is pathetic.

Their website is here. Owner Denver Radio Company also owns 107.1 oneFM with another cast of dorky DJs and a half tolerable playlist, apparently designed to compete with 105.9 FM in the way that 101.5 FM is designed to compete with 93.3 FM.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Shirah at Unbossed is concerned that building toilets with electric flushers is tempting fate.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

Somehow, I can bring myself to feel much concern for the fact that sales of grossly overpriced real estate in Colorado's resort communities are down by double digit percentages, about 50% in Aspen, the most expensive of them all. Perhaps this is because, while sales are down, prices are holding steady (actually increasing in Aspen).

Outside resort communities, Western Slope real estate prices are surging, as mining activity ramps up in the face of surging oil, gas and metal prices. But, even flush oil miners can't afford to live in Vail or Aspen (something long out of the price range of people who actually work there).Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)

The conventional wisdom is that college attrition is closely linked to flunking out. This is not the whole truth:

In 1994, 33% of all college freshman dropped out--the highest dropout rate since the early 1980s. Studies showed that these students were not, by and large, flunking out. Academically, they could have stayed in school. But they didn't. The theory was--and remains--that what drove these students out of college was alienation, a sense of not belonging.

Demographics and income play an important part in retention:

According to the National Center for Education Statistics' 2002 "Condition of Education" report, 63% of high school graduates go straight on to college (as compared to 49% in 1972). 66% of white students go straight from high school to college, while only 55% of black students and about 50% of Hispanic students do. The numbers have improved for black students over time--only 38% of black high school grads were going right on to college in 1983. But the numbers have stayed largely the same for Hispanic students, hovering around 50% since 1972. Those numbers are correlated with income--the higher the family income, the more likely students are to go to college. . . . Affirmative action has helped a great deal with the admissions part of the equation. But retaining and graduating students of color continues to elude even schools that are trying their hardest to do so. Whereas 84% of white students enrolling at Berkeley between 1987 and 1990 graduated within six years, only 58% of black students and 67% of Hispanics did. As of the late 90s, the national black dropout rate was 60%; at elite schools, it was 25%--better, but still not great.

But, while those who don't stay may not be literally flunking out, academic preparation is clearly also an important factor in retention:

The numbers are also correlated with the quality of secondary school education--college-qualified low and middle income students who applied are as likely as wealthy students to enroll in college within 2 years of graduation (83 and 82% respectively). Those who took rigorous courseloads in high school have much better chances of making it through college to graduation.

I suspect that while many of these students did not flunk out, that they also were doing far less well in terms of grades, than their peers who stayed, within every economic and demographic group. But it is harder to stay when doing so means racking up big personal debts or putting financial pressures on family or losing scholarships that have higher expectations than the institution itself.

If you know what to expect, you are convinced that you are well prepared, you can count on virtually unconditional parental economic support that doesn't lead to family hardship, and you have peers to whom you feel you can turn, your college experience can be pretty bad before you consider dropping out. And, if you stick it out, you are more likely to get that all important piece of sheepskin and corresponding resume entry.

In interesting footnote to this discussion is the change in retention patterns at Yale. As explained by The Yale Herald:

uring the first half of the 20th century, roughly one out of every four students who matriculated at Yale College did not graduate. . . . All this changed in the '60s and '70s, as Yale's graduation rate surged past 90 percent, never to dip below that threshold again as a result of reforms in admissions. Over the last 25 years, Yale has graduated nearly 95 percent of its students. . . .

What's more, the five percent of any Yale class that does not graduate includes not only students who flunk out but also transfer students and those who withdraw for personal or medical reasons. The upshot: The genuine "flunkee" is an endangered species at Yale, a true Blue statistical outlier. . . . the most self-evident—albeit self-congratulatory—explanation for the paucity of F's is that the Admissions office selects students of such a high academic caliber that failing is rarely an issue. With an acceptance rate of 9.9 percent for the Class of 2008, Yale has never been as selective as it is now. . . .

Yale's retention rate increased dramatically in the '60s "because of changes in admissions policies and the desirability of an education at Yale." More specifically, the transition to a need-blind admissions process ensured that the University would accept the best and the brightest, not just the entitled. "With financial aid policies we're just pulling students here from a much larger pool," he said. "Plus the decision to admit women [in 1969] doubled that pool. And so students come in less likely to fail. I think [the rise in graduation rate] has less to do with a change in professors than with a change on the part of the students."

Having been at Yale both as a student in the '70s and as a teacher since 1996, Eire speaks from first-hand experience in agreeing with this assessment. "Between 1965 and 1970 a big change came—Yale became a true meritocracy whereas before it had been an aristocracy."

There is some anxiety at Yale that professors conditioned to thinking that students are smart are unduely reluctant to flunk failing students, but it doesn't seem to have much substance to it. Comparison of retention rates at comparably selective institutions also elicits an interesting response from administrators at those schools:

In light of substantially lower graduation rates at a number of top-tier academic institutions—most notably Caltech, MIT, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins—one may wonder what Yale is doing differently to identify and avert possible failures. When asked to speculate on the reasons behind Caltech's relatively low six-year graduation rate of 89 percent, Linda King, Caltech's associate registrar, pointed to a fundamental difference between both the structures and curricula of Caltech and Yale. "We're an engineering and science school that only graduates 200 students," she said, contrasting Caltech with institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, which have both a much larger student body and a more wide-ranging curriculum. Dean Salovey clarified the impact that curricular diversity may have on a university's retention rate, implying that schools like MIT and Caltech are less able to handle students' changing interests. "I would guess that [the difference in graduation rates between Yale and Caltech and MIT] may have less to do with grading or failing," he said. "So many students come to college with a certain idea of what they want to do, and then that idea gets challenged. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton can accommodate students who come in with one thing in mind and then want to pursue something different."

The implication is that elite tech colleges may be losing students to transfers, not necessarily immediate, rather than to ultimately concluded educations.

Another interesting observation is that college dropouts who leave for academic reasons tend to do so early:

Another important finding of research on student success* is that the seeds of leaving college tend to be planted early. “It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that you will lose half of the people you will lose — either physically or psychologically — by the end of the first semester,” said Peter Ewell, an expert on higher education assessment and vice president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS).

“Certainly you don’t find a lot of people flunking out for academic reasons after the second year.”

Administrators at Elon University in North Carolina attribute increased retention to active efforts to prevent student alienation and provide extra support early on, and have some statistics to back up their claims:

University officials credit Elon’s first-year program with a consistent rise in four-year graduation rates from 45 percent in 1989 to 69 percent for the most recent graduating class. The rise has been particularly dramatic among African-American students, whose retention rates nearly doubled — rising from 32 percent to 71 percent — during this period.

This response to poor retention appears to be the preferred approach of college administrators.

Others argue that the real problem is in an admissions process that is too easy to allow people into college without telling them that the odds of success with their current levels of preparation are dismal, and argue against a college for all attitude (even if that only means community college for all):

Recent research shows that fewer than 38 percent of high school students who plan to get a college degree actually do so within 10 years of graduating. Of those with poor high school grades, less than 14 percent achieve their college plans. Many of these college dropouts get no college credits and enter the labor market no better off. Like other young people without college degrees, they face the prospect of dead-end jobs that offer minimum wages, low status and little training—a situation that appears to continue many years after graduation. . . . This particular group of young people is the focus of James E. Rosenbaum’s most recent book, Beyond College for All: Career Paths for the Forgotten Half. . . .

A recent study found that 58.3 percent of high school graduates who landed jobs were only continuing the same dead-end jobs they had held in high school, while a 1993 survey of new high school graduates showed that four months after graduation 26 percent of whites and 50 percent of blacks had not been hired. . . .

Community colleges offering a two-year associate of arts (A.A.) degree aimed to reduce the academic barriers to college by offering open admissions and remedial courses. On one level these policies have succeeded—enrollment in public community colleges increased fivefold from 1960 to 1990.

But those numbers tell only one side of the story. Rosenbaum’s research shows that 92 percent of students with low grades planning to earn an A.A. failed to do so—even higher than the 86 percent of those who abandoned their plans to earn a BA. He discovered that in some city colleges the dropout rate is as high as 80 percent.

"We’re deceiving students by not warning them," Rosenbaum says. . .

Rosenbaum likens today’s situation to a confidence game—students are initially led to believe they can obtain something easily. By the time they realize it’s a false promise, it’s too late to get out of the predicament. School staff members may have good intentions when they withhold information, but it is harmful to students’ careers. "When students fail they blame themselves. They think, ‘It’s all my fault." When they drop out they see no hope in getting a job. They feel terrible going through a job search. The really sad thing is that it’s so easily avoidable."

In short, students with low grades should at least hear from their guidance counselors that they are setting themselves up to fail by trying to go to college, and that college isn't the only option.

He argues that American high schools should follow the model of German and Japanese high schools which play a central role in job placement for non-college bound students, convince employers to care about high school grades that are otherwise irrelevant to students not bound for college, and "provide assessment of so-called 'soft skills'—deportment, attendance, sociability—that employers desire."

He notes that the skilled trades and clerical jobs are preferrable to the service sector dead end jobs where many kids out of high school who are not bound for college end up.

Almost all the professors who taught G.I. Bill students came away with stories about how these older college students were better prepared and more focused than those coming straight out of a high school, something that is directly contrary to the evidence that those who take time out after high school are less likely to graduate.

The two stories don't need to be contradictory, however. Even if college is the right choice for a large percentage of people, many of them are not ready for it in their late teens, and need a number of years to mature and get serious about life before they are ready. The statistics focus on students not starting college immediately who are only briefly out of high school, and many colleges are ill designed for the lives of older students, who, if they go to school full time need a more intensive experience than two sixteen week semesters a year, themselves awash in parties (a theme Regis University in Denver has made a mantra of its marketing). Maybe if we created an easier way for people who have been out of high school for a while to take up college later in life, more people would go to college when they were really ready, rather than when the calendar told them to do so.Copyright Andrew Oh-Willeke (2007)