Yes, Travis McGee was that good

And we have it on excellent authority, courtesy of the Harvard Business School Alumni Review. It offers a letter to John. D. from an admirer:

Dear Mr. MacDonald, Would you please send me Travis McGee?…. I have read all the books you wrote and I am desperate because there are no more….I am distributing your books here in Europe, and everybody is deserting everybody because nobody will sleep with anybody when they have a new book of yours.”
(Marlene Dietrich, 1975)


Younger readers may wonder, "Whoozat?"

Hoplophobe hoot

This guy is news editor of the Grand View University newspaper in Des Moines. He is presumably unarmed, but terrifying. In a piece bemoaning  the recent  Iowa shall-issue law he writes:

I don't agree with police officers being able to shoot when they feel necessary but at least they are trained.

So, Devlin, you don't agree officers should shoot when, for instance, they desire to inhibit a crack-rattled 250-pound thug coming at you fast with a Louisville Slugger?


Of, if a cop makes a mistake, that the unnecessarily dead should be comforted because the bullet in his brain was not fired by an untrained amateur?


I suppose it's possible to believe that I cherry-picked the item, looking for the worst possible paragraph. (We've all written some stinkers, haven't we?)


No, down a little further:


The exception to carry guns should rely solely in law enforcement and military because I have never heard of a purely positive outcome after one has been fired.


What's been fired? A lawman? A National Guard PFC? (See Wagner's advice to high school freshmen on making referents clear.)  And, setting aside the tortured syntax, do you intend to spend your journalism career making universal pronouncements based on things you personally have or haven't heard?


Or what you hope, without actual thought?


I hope the clean background checks are enough to categorize people as sane enough not to incite a shootout with other gun carriers.


I see.  You hope shootouts are limited to folks with guns shooting it out with folks who have no guns. 


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Ladies and gentlemen, we all have bad days, and maybe Dev was suffering through one, manifested in marginal literacy and more than marginal incoherence throughout the piece. 


On the other hand, we might be dealing with the error President Obama committed Tuesday night when he told congress and the world that every youngster "should have access to higher education."


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H/T to Between Two Rivers where, by the way, there is yeoman work in keeping track of local efforts to gut the shall-issue law. 

Johnny, stop reading that. Right Now!

Crack history students at Westfield High School in Fairfax,Virginia, have a simplified task. They are to learn from teacher handouts, their private previous knowledge, and one, repeat one, book. 


The  teachers' rules are worth quoting. The reporter writes:



What did surprise some Westfield students and their parents was a sheet titled "Expectations of Integrity" included in the materials handed out by the three (advanced placement)  World History teachers. Their No. 1 rule discouraged random outbreaks of curiosity:

"You are only allowed to use your OWN knowledge, your OWN class notes, class handouts, your OWN class homework, or The Earth and Its Peoples textbook to complete assignments and assessments UNLESS specifically informed otherwise by your instructor.''

Perish the thought of fertile young minds polluted by, say, a wander through Commanger's Documents of American History or Gibbons' take on the last centuries of imperial Rome.


Reporter Jay Mathews was taken aback and asked the  boss about it.


Westfield Principal Tim Thomas told me he will decide soon whether these rules are okay. He couldn't say much on the record, but gave me the impression that the teachers, who did not respond to my request for comment, were only trying to be fair. Some students have more help and resources than others. They should not be allowed to use materials classmates cannot get. 


We're indebted to the Tweaker at  Where Sometimes Things go Bang  for this find and for the pertinent "Just make sure no child gets ahead."


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I'm rather sure the publicity will move the teachers to hem and haw, "That's not what we meant."  I will then suggest they surrender their licenses to teach until such time as they have successfully completed a remedial course in basic expository writing. 

Egypt

It is a bread riot, period.

The street warfare is domestic reaction to domestic sin, namely theft of the nation's resources by Mubarak's apparatchik.

The Muslim Brotherhood is undoubtedly pleased at the prospect of a Cairo power vacuum, but when 10 million mothers are too malnourished to produce breast milk, it takes no cabal of turbaned Pat Robertsons to create a certain amount of anger.

Yes, it may contribute to four-dollar gas in Pleasantville, but there is nothing the inept American foreign policy machine can do about that. What Hillary, President Obama, and USAID can profitably do is shut up.  Except for issuing a statement suggested by my buddy Joe in during a similar foreign goat grope some years ago. "We are sorry for your troubles and wish you all the best of luck. Have the last man standing send us a telegram. We'll be pleased to deal with him."