Something Funny

Here's something I think is kind of funny... My daughter has applied to 13 different colleges and universities around the country - and not just the generic ones, I'm talking name brand colleges - the type that wind up in Hollywood movies with stuffy people sitting around large, wooden tables in rooms filled floor-to-ceiling with books - and if one of those places happens to accept her, I have absolutely no idea of how we are going to pay for it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAHHAHAH (Psychotic laugh)

This is all my mother's fault. First, she and her other two daughters conspired and colluded - and my daughter marched off to boarding school. (At tuition time, there was neither hide nor hair of them to be found...)

Then she hands my daughter a credit card (which I only found out about by accident) and instead of heading straight off to Saks or Nordstrom and spending a small fortune on shoes like a normal kid (thereby teaching my mother a valuable lesson) - my daughter uses it to pay the college application fees and apply to every college she has ever heard of.

And the college fund that I started for her when she was born? I think there are 2 or 3 thousand dollars in it... that would barely cover the cost of applying. I don't know what happened! I blinked and she grew up.

Excuse me for a sec while I lose it...

(More psychotic laughter )

And by the way, my mother never gave me a credit card!

Ackbar.

RH

Where to Go to College?

Where? No really, I'm asking! My daughter is a junior in high school now; the time when students start weighing their options, researching schools, trying to find the right mix of affordability and quality.

There are the pie in the sky options: Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia...those fine old institutions with excellent reputations for their unyielding devotion to the pursuit of knowledge. Oh yeah, and the piece of paper you get at the end that pretty much guarantees the holder admittance to the good life. (After you pay off the $150,000 in student loans).

A parent can lose sleep at night just thinking about the cost of sending one's offspring off to college. You want only the best for your children, right?

Well cheer up! Recent events have shown that many of those pricey places are full of numskulls, and you can in good conscience tell your child that you are not going to waste your money to have them be taught by idiots.

Who am I to judge you say? Well, here is why I say this. Let's take Stanford as an example. The Hoover Institution has invited Donald Rumsfeld to come hang out for a spell. Many on the faculty at Stanford have signed a petition trying to prevent Mr. Rumsfeld from doing so (students too, but they are young and ignorant so they are excused.)

My point is as follows: This is not about whether you like or dislike, agree or disagree with Donald Rumsfeld. It is about a group of people who are employed by what I used to think was one of the finest universities in the US, who are supposed to be interested in truth and knowledge, categorically refusing to give an opposing viewpoint a forum.

Here is a man who for better or worse has been advising on, shaping, creating and deciding American foreign policy for roughly 40 years and these Brainiacs don't even want to listen to him? Because they somehow know that he is immoral? How do they know that? Does the sun go dark and do flowers wilt when he is near? Because they work at Stanford and therefore know everything? Don't you have to know a few facts to make a judgement like that?

Wouldn't they be just a little curious to hear what a man like Rumsfeld has to say in a non-soundbite environment? Couldn't they entertain the notion that perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld has a few useful things to say just based on his unique perspective? I guarantee you there are things that this man knows that nobody else does. The chances of us learning about them are small, but the chances are ZERO if we refuse to even listen.

What does a math professor and an art history professor know about global politics anyway? Do they really think they know better? How can you be sure you haven't gone off the deep end in your thinking if you are surrounded by people who "think" just like you? Here is their official gripe:

"We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws, and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed."

I mean seriously. How can you write something like that without drowning in the hypocrisy of it?

Cross Columbia off the list too. If the President of the school is such a dope¹, you know the rest of them can't be much better.

Cornell hired one of the 2 professors who were crucifying the 4 Lacrosse players at Duke University, so they must look for only those qualified to "Leap before you Look".

The collective motto of our nation's higher learning institutions seems to be:

"Who Needs Reality? We Have Opinions!"

So I am going to save my money....after all I have my own opinion, and it's FREE!

RH

¹ For not listening to his mother when she told him "There is no excuse for bad manners", for giving our enemies all the more ammunition against us, and for having the audacity to say things like this: "According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executing In Iran so far this year, 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone." US Executions (See: Pot vs. Kettle)