10:24 – The eurozone train wreck continues, with Spanish benchmark 10-year bond yields now at 7.6% and climbing, and Italian yields well over 6%. Even more concerning is that Spain’s efforts to make it look as though the market is still supporting their debt auctions by offering only small face amounts at short maturities have failed miserably. Spanish short-term debt yields are now over 6%, a strong indication that Spain is about to lose all access to market funding. In effect, it already has. Right now, only speculators willing to risk their money for short periods at very high yields are buying Spanish debt. The market as a whole is much too risk-averse to put money into Spanish bonds, or indeed leave it in Spanish banks. That giant sucking sound you hear is billions of euros a day leaving Spain. And Italy isn’t doing much better. They’ve just announced that they may not be able to start the new school year this autumn because they don’t have the money to do so.
Meanwhile, Barbara and I are still building science kits. We just added 30 biology kits to inventory, and are most of the way through building 60 more chemistry kits. After that, we’ll build the first batch of 30 forensic science kits, and then start immediately on new batches of biology and chemistry kits.
13:05 – Wow. The NCAA let Penn State off with a slap on the wrist. What would have been an appropriate NCAA penalty for a university guilty of covering up institutionalized child rape under the auspices of the athletic program? How about expulsion from the NCAA? Not just football, but all sports. Permanently. The entire Penn State athletic program should have been eradicated and the corpse left to rot as a warning to others.
14:11 – As usual, Pat Condell gets right to the heart of the matter. American Dhimmi
So is the world’s economy heading into the ditch? Or are we just pausing to find out who is going to win the presidential election in Nov ?
It is pouring down rain here in Sugar land. Last summer, we could not buy a 1/10th inch of rain. This summer, over 10 inches and counting.
Robert, Robert, Robert. You’re so young and so naive. NCAA isn’t about
justice or even about law. It’s all about
money. So long as the fans keep buying tickets and merchandise,
well, it’s too bad what happened to the kids, but the fans are still
buying tickets and merchandise, so it all worked out ok in the end.
(No pun intended, unless making it a deliberate pun in poor taste would
sell more merchandise.)
How about expulsion from the NCAA? Not just football, but all sports. Permanently.
That would have affected many people, especially athletes, that had nothing to do with the issue. Those athletes should not be penalized. As it stands the penalties will kill the football program for at least 8 years. Those athletes currently in the program will be allowed to transfer to other schools. Those on scholarships if they chose to remain will be allowed to continue in school without playing ball.
The monetary penalty cannot be taken from other sports programs besides football. The amount is about the gross revenue from football for a year.
The penalties will severely hurt the university in all manner, including prestige.
The lack of severity of the so-called penalties essentially means that the NCAA condones institutionalized child rape. As Steve said, the NCAA (and college sports in general) is all about money, period. The whole thing was disgusting before the child rape hit the news; that takes it entirely beyond the pale.
That would have affected many people, especially athletes, that had nothing to do with the issue. Those athletes should not be penalized.
This is true of any case of corporate malfeasance. If a DoD contractor violates the rules, a contract can be terminated and they can be banned from future contracts for a period of time. The workers on the contract will lose their jobs, even though they didn’t do anything wrong. You have to establish that a company can’t get away with breaking the rules and the law without consequences. It’s about establishing a culture of ethical behavior, of not putting Football above doing the right thing. This is as much about preventing future bad behavior around the NCAA as it is punishing PSU. (And making the NCAA look effective……)
NCAA (and college sports in general) is all about money, period.
Of that there is little doubt. University of TN is nothing more than a sports training camp with a university attached to allow them to get state funding.
If a DoD contractor violates the rules, a contract can be terminated and they can be banned from future contracts for a period of time. The workers on the contract will lose their jobs, even though they didn’t do anything wrong.
True. I have no problem with the fines against the PSU. I have no problem with the loss of scholarships. I have no issue with the denial of bowl games. All seem reasonable. What I don’t like is the vacating of the wins from 1998 through 2011. That slams the players who played the game and had no knowledge of the events. Do the players give back their championship hats, shirts and rings?
Vacating wins is stupid. A team loses a bowl game 35 to 7. And now the team that scored 35 points did not win? That is only a paper shuffling operation and really changes nothing. The reason the NCAA vacated the wins was to remove Joe’s record of winningest coach in football (most wins in NCAA sports belongs to Pat Summit). It was done to get even with Joe who is now deceased as it would be difficult to put him in prison.
I have long maintained that competitive sports programs do not belong in schools at any level—period! You want sports, then form sports clubs, entirely separate from schools and have at it.
My high school, which was once in a solidly middle-class neighborhood, when the city moved way on up north, is now in a blighted area that is one of the poorest sections of the city. The members of my class have formed a financial aid group, because the school cannot even afford uniforms for basketball or football. It won’t be me contributing to try and extend sports in that school.
Organized exercise of some sort is needed for kids, yes; but competitive sports—no! Let’s eliminate all sports from all schools!
I have long maintained that competitive sports programs do not belong in schools at any level—period!
Well, yes, if you by competitive sports you mean the moneymaking kind. I think it’s fine to have students playing football, baseball, soccer, volleyball, or whatever – as part of various physical education programs. It’s the money that screws everything up. Remove the money from the system by prohibiting ticket sales, athletic scholarships and commercial sponsorships. If fans just must have their pound of flesh, let them organize athletic institutions that do nothing else than train athletes for professional sports teams.
I thought Tiny Town had the largest high school gym in Indiana? And they can’t figure out how to fund basketball uniforms for the team that plays there? I suspected Tiny Town was a ghost town before I started reading your comments, but that seals it.
I would rather watch the Roller Derby of 40 – 50 years ago that any of the stick and ball sports of today.
Oh yeah, what about feeding, housing and renumerating functional illerates for four years and dumping them out totally uneducated?
We moved away from Tiny Town before I was of high school age. You are entirely correct that Tiny Town has the largest high school basketball gymnasium in the world (13 of the 15 largest are in Indiana; the others are in Kentucky, Arizona, and Dallas, Texas). Nevertheless, the entire Tiny Town school corporation (whole county) received an F rating from the state education department, and is on probation. If things do not improve over the next year, then the school will be taken over by the state and its management will be turned over to a private firm, just like my Indy high school, Arlington has been.
Arlington was the first of the expansion high schools built to accommodate the baby-boomers. Before construction was complete, there were 3,200 kids attending a building designed for 1,400 (the situation when I graduated). That school is now K-12 and has a total enrollment of around 500. It was twice scheduled for demolition as unnecessary, but a public outcry based on sentimentality (sports again: because it became a #1 basketball and football powerhouse after the neighborhood changed from white to predominantly black) prevented it, and they have recently poured millions into refurbishing it. A young cousin did his student teaching there last year, and told me that no education at all is going on there. Classrooms are totally out-of-control, and teachers no longer even make an effort to lecture, because students will not stop talking and using their cell phones during class. So they pass out worksheets and let the kids do whatever they want. Of course, students cannot be failed (I am not kidding about that), so they graduate whether they actually learn anything or not. A high school degree from the Indianapolis Public School system is 100% meaningless—whereas, when I had to transfer universities because they wanted to ‘pass my work scholarship around’ at my original Indianapolis university, the admissions director at Indiana University was a bit concerned, until we got to the question of my high school. When I said “Arlington”, she asked, “Chicago? or Indianapolis?” “Indianapolis,” I responded, and she quickly replied, “Then there will be no problem.” My transfer went through like greased lightning. Wonder what the response would be today?
I have no problems with organized exercise for kids, focusing on whatever, including game sports. But no after-school sports, and no intramural games of any sort. In Indianapolis city schools, gangs revolve around sports activities—another reason why sports competition should be completely removed from all schools—and with all the revelations of corruption in a great many higher education schools: colleges, and universities, too.
Hmm. I missed this last week—Stephen Covey dies after an earlier bicycle accident:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/stephen-covey-dead_n_1676830.html
I think sport is a good thing at school and university, but the way it’s implemented in the US is nuts. There should be no sports scholarships, and there should be a lot less money in it. Let the donors give their money to a worthy cause.
I just came back from lunch, and the venue was displaying a cricket match. There was advertising *everywhere*. Artificially superimposed on the ground, on the players’ shirts, the umpires’ shirts, on their underwear for all I know. It spoils the game I think. And don’t get me started on English Soccer. The best players there get insano wages, there’s advertising everywhere and it costs far far too much to go to a game.
I think a certain, limited amount of advertising is a good thing, but the current saturation is one of the reasons I gave up watching TV.
I also think that some of the wrong people were punished at Penn State. Sure, the people who were involved in the coverup should be treated severely, but not the students who had no involvement. They are being punished for other people’s sins.
I didn’t realize you went to Arlington. Thankfully, I didn’t go to school there. Given the location of my mom’s house, that’s where I would have gone had I not gone to a private school instead. I wound up moving to live with my dad and graduating from Howe thirty years ago.
According to an article in the Indianapolis Star, my high school math teacher is still teaching, but has moved to Manual High School. I think that the Indianapolis Public Schools deteriorated from the time Chuck and my father in law graduated from Arlington to the time I graduated. In the thirty years since I graduated, deterioration is far too mild a word to describe what happened.
Saw this on Facebook and liked it: “If you’re upset about Penn State taking down Joe Paterno’s statue, then just look the other away and pretend it’s not happening.”