Senora Ross' grading scandal

The LA Times has a story today about 20 USC students, mostly athletes who were denied credit for a summer Spanish course. They took the course at a local community college from Señora Ross, who, to put it nicely, had a liberal grading policy. There were 5 B's and everyone else got an A.

"I've never given an easy grade in my life," she told The Times in a recent interview. "You come to my class and work, and I see you want to learn, I'll give you an A. I see some lazy ass, coming late all the time, acting like he doesn't care, I won't give him an A. I'll give him a B."

I really like her teaching philosophy, though:

"Ross, meanwhile, remains feisty and unbowed, stoutly defending teaching methods she has used for more than 40 years.

"The most important thing in learning is that everyone likes the teacher," she said."

I thought the most important thing was that the students learn something in the class.

Ginobli -- turnabout is fair play?

After the very strange 1 game suspension of Kobe Bryant for hitting Manu Ginobli in the nose after a jump shot earlier this week, it will be interesting to see what happens after tonight's Suns - Spurs game. Ginobli just nailed Amare Stoudemire in a very personal area with his knee. It sure looked like a very unnatural basketball move, so if Kobe Bryant's hand to the nose was enough for a suspension, this move should at least be reviewed. I liked the commentator's statement "that every man in American can feel the pain right now".

Disable Snap

Those Snap previews get to be a pain in the neck after a while, especially when they are very slow to load. Lifehacker points out today that there is a download on the Snap site which will disable the previews. It's a cookie, so it only works until you clear your cookies, but it does the job. I tried out the Snap functionality for about two days and then turned it off. For a while I got emails from them asking why I didn't have it working on my site. I think it turns out to be one of those things that seems pretty cool at first but just quickly becomes a pain in the neck and on sites that use it I find I don't even look at the previews.

Classmates.com - service or fortress?

I have a free account at Classmates.com and every time someone I might have gone to school with visits the site, they send me an email reminding me to visit the site. When I do, it's just one wall after another where unless I pay for a real membership, I can't do much. Can't get someone's email address, look at their photos, see how they answered some survey, etc. It seems that the whole purpose of the free membership is to try to get you to pay up for the full thing. Some people I went to high school with are setting up a reunion and one guy posted a message and said email me to get the details. Can't do it without a full membership. He can't show his email address.

Bottleneck blog - one hit wonder?

Steve Lopez' Bottleneck blog about LA traffic is up to an incredible 602 comments on his first post, but comments have steadily declined since then. Subsequent posts have 116, 52, 19, 5, 0, and 2 comments. I guess he made a big splash and then dropped back to reality. Or maybe that first question was just so good that nothing could match it. I'd still be happy with 5 comments on anything I've written. On the other hand, googling "Bottleneck Blog" comes back with the original site at 1 and 2 and this site in 3rd. Maybe nobody else wrote about it...

Blogger Bug

Blogger isn't in beta any longer, but there are still some bugs. I've got one blog which will not convert to the new blogger. The first time I tried to convert it, I was locked out of all my Blogger blogs for a couple of days, which was not good. This must have had something to do with my participation as a beta tester for Google. The blog that won't convert was "upgraded" during the beta testing and then put back to the old version, but something must not have gone right because each time I've tried to move to the new Blogger, things have gone wrong. Now I can't even try as the system locks me out of the upgrade. I guess I'll have to leave that blog in old Bloggerland.

A Crowded House at Coachella

The Coachella Valley Music Festival is coming up in April and people are already getting excited about it. It's one of the top ten Google searches for this past week as tickets went on sale. It's a huge event over 3 days. Australian band Crowded House are reforming after ten years' of non-activity and their first appearance will be at the Coachella Valley Music Festival in April. I get them confused with the British band Madness who did a song called "Our House" and really they aren't very much alike. One group wears funny hats and the other one is from Australia and they didn't do that "Land Down Under" song but did have some other catchy songs.

Tennis and golf dominated by two guys

It does seem like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods win all the big ones in their sports, like they did today. I don't think I remember a time when tennis and golf were dominated so much by one person in each sport. Women's tennis had Steffi Graf and golf has had Annika Sorenstam more recently, but men's golf and tennis, especially the major events may be a little predictable. It's always a bunch of other guys trying for second place, or so it seems. I don't mind much and if Tiger Woods isn't playing I probably won't even watch golf. I think it might be better if one of these guys was a jerk, but they aren't, or at least don't appear to be. We may have to settle for another 5 years of this.

Stanford - UCLA men's basketball

I had a feeling that Stanford would give UCLA a good game today. It didn't look good in the first half as Stanford couldn't put the ball in the basket. The second half was a different story as Stanford played much better on offense and defense. Those two Lopez guys are already pretty good but in another year they should be unstoppable. I'd like to see them both on the court at the same time, although they are both playing the same position, so that may not happen too much. It was nice to see Stanford beat UCLA, something which used to happen frequently but hasn't been so common lately.

Haircut

One of my sons had gone a long time in between haircuts. His hair was pretty long, which was fine with me, but his disdain for showers was the problem. His hair wasn't too clean and no amount of suggesting that he just have it trimmed so he wouldn't have to worry about washing it every day was going to change his desire to have long hair. This situation went on for a couple of months and although he did get it trimmed, resulting in a mullet, there wasn't a lot of joy related to his hair. For me, at least. The other day I came home from work and was surprised to see that he had decided to get a haircut. Not just a trim, but a crewcut, similar to what his brother has. In fact, I thought he was his brother at first glance. The good thing about this is that because it was his decision, there is no more complaining about his hair. Now, we'll see what happens when it grows back enough to where he needs another haircut.