Curmudgeon Central

  Reggie Bush: He’s baaaaaaack. Former University of Southern California tailback Reggie Bush had his 2005 Heisman Trophy returned to him  this week.  It had been “voluntarily” ret...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-implications-of-returning-reggie.html

Taylor Swift is making news again.  Shocking, huh? Her newest deluxe album, “The Dead Poets Department: The Anthology,” dropped last week to much applause from Curmie’s Swiftie friends ...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/04/on-faux-controversy-over-taylor-swifts.html

One of Curmie’s friends and former students (we’ll call him L for the purposes of this post) teaches theatre in a public school.  He recently posted on Facebook about a confrontation he�...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/04/why-theres-teacher-shortage-exhibit-a.html

RBG is not amused. The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation began awarding the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Women in Leadership Award in 2019; it was presented annually to an exceptional woman who has been a...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-opperman-foundation-renders-its.html

Zillionaire basketball coaches who have been fired for corruption even by a university not known for scrupulous ethics tend not to be at the top of Curmie’s heroes list.  Rick Pitino is one su...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/03/is-ncaa-selection-committee-stupid-or.html

Last week, Curmie attended what he suspects will be his last professional conference, as he has now retired from a leadership position at an organization that holds its annual meeting there.  B...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/03/wishing-for-little-less-painlessness.html

The men’s basketball team at Curmie’s undergrad alma mater, Dartmouth College, is an embarrassment.  No, not because they’re terrible, although they are: they have secured last place, a...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/03/dartmouths-basketball-team-embarrasses.html

After the Wake Forest Demon Deacons beat the Duke Blue Devils 83-79 in basketball Saturday afternoon in Winston-Salem, hordes of Deac fans stormed the court . Actually, Gentle Reader, the previou...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/02/court-storming-and-absence-of.html

Curmie has two partially-written posts, one of them soon to pass its sell-by date and the other getting closer and closer.  He’s promised Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms a guess post on pla...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/02/just-what-you-needed-more-on-taylor.html

Let’s get this part out of the way up front.  The only times Curmie has ever cared about awards like the Oscars were when a friend or a friend’s project was nominated.  Also, Curmie has ...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/on-barbie-snubs.html

  Curmie won’t get an obituary in the NYT, but he hopes he’ll at least get an equivalent photo to this one. One of the first things Curmie read this morning on his Facebook feed was th...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/in-memoriam-peter-schickele.html

  A modern day petard, You didn’t really want to see a photo of Bill O'Reilly, did you? We begin, Gentle Reader, with a short lesson in vocabulary and etymology in reference to the titl...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/of-bill-oreilly-hoising-and-petards.html

OK, Curmie recently pointed out a handful of the manifold problems with college football as it is currently structured, especially with respect to the bowl system.  There are some issues tha...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/ncaa-football-part-2-some-sort-of.html

John Sauer addresses the court. One of the most common devices of Trump apologists is to cite some rumor or innuendo about a prominent Democrat and sneeringly remark “but sure, it’s Donal...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-sauertrump-hail-mary-pass.html

The college football season ended this week with the Michigan Wolverines convincingly defeating the Washington Huskies, 34-13, in the national championship game.  Curmie admits to being a fan...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/ncaa-football-part-1-some-of-problems.html

Back in the days of yore, when Curmie was an undergraduate Government major, one of the core principles in his Political Ideals class, only slightly oversimplified, was that conservatives tend to...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/schrodingers-cat-and-right-wing-punditry.html

Good programs, less good membership department A couple of days ago, one of Curmie’s longtime friends posted on Facebook about the onslaught of pleas from various charities—charities to whic...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/hanlons-razor-rides-to-defense-of-kera.html

The Belfry Theatre was vandalized last month while the venue was deciding whether to go forward the production of The Runner. There is a theory, one to which Curmie subscribes, which sugges...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-belfry-theatres-crisis-of-nerve.html

Claudine Gay at the Congressional hearing The recent resignations of Liz Magill and Claudine Gay as presidents at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University are, of course, of inte...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/further-musings-on-context.html

Do NOT expect this in an English “Christmas special” The exact origins of the clever phrase “divided by a common language” are disputed.  Various sources credit Oscar Wilde; others p...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2024/01/about-those-christmas-specials.html

Liz Magill testifying For better or worse, the testimony of the presidents (well, one of them is now an ex-president) of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania before a congressional c...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2023/12/context-and-effort-to-pretend-it-doesnt.html

Thirty-something years ago, Curmie read an article—perhaps it was in an academic journal, but he can’t remember for certain—that sought to distinguish between “good” teachers and �...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2023/12/good-vs-great-teaching.html

  A somewhat off-topic comment on a post on Ethics Alarms got me thinking about Monopoly, and indeed about the two recent commercials I’ve seen for the board game.  It’s now well-estab...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2023/11/about-those-monopoly-ads.html

As those who know me personally know, Curmie has spent about four months in Ireland, mostly in Dublin.  I’ve led seven Study Abroad programs there and led walking tours from O’Connell Br...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2023/11/observations-on-violence-in-dublin.html

If you see blackface here, please leave this page.  It’s for intelligent people. A few days ago, I commented on a post on Ethics Alarms  regarding the high school principal in Sherman, Texa...

http://manjushri924.blogspot.com/2023/11/eye-black-is-not-blackface-duh.html