“Philosophy, for Profit - The Chronicle of Higher Education” plus 3 more

Philosophy, for Profit - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Burgess goes Wilde with footy philosophy - ninemsn
NIXON'S HARD-WON CHANCE TO LEAD - Time
D'Antoni gets snippy, says media can't coach a lick » - New York Daily News

Philosophy, for Profit - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted: 28 Feb 2010 01:57 PM PST

February 28, 2010

Karen Kasmauski for The CHronicle

Marc Sehring repairs military vehicles for museums by day and studies military history by night at American Public U. System, a for-profit online college. He is working toward a degree that might help him become a curator. "It's not an Ivy League school," he says, but "it's what I'm looking for—an education I can do in my time."

Enlarge Photo

By Marc Parry

Charles Town, W.Va.

Fire the tenured faculty. Abandon the campus. Lock the library.

Now look at what's left and answer this question: Who says you can't make money off the liberal arts?

For traditional colleges gasping to keep humanities programs above water, this vision is Dante's ninth circle of hell. Here in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, it's daily life at the biggest liberal-arts mecca you've never heard of.

The American Public University System

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Burgess goes Wilde with footy philosophy - ninemsn

Posted: 28 Feb 2010 05:29 AM PST

Not content to shine among the All Stars and have Gorden Tallis rate him potentially the best Englishman to play in Australia, South Sydney recruit Sam Burgess has started quoting Oscar Wilde.

The Rabbitohs' UK sensation pulled out a rare league-meets-literature moment after Saturday night's 26-26 Charity Shield draw with St George Illawarra.

Burgess was asked about Tallis's comment that he will "probably be the best Pommie forward to come out here".

"Cheers Gorden, not much pressure on me now lad," he replied. "Very inspiring to hear him say that."

But the former Bradford forward then called on Irish playwright Wilde's famous wit and wisdom.

"I've got a quote, been told a quote from Oscar Wilde, and it were 'You know what you can do yourself, no matter what people say negative or positive, you know your own abilities' and I try and work by that," Burgess said.

"I try not to carried away by what people say about me. I know what I'm capable of and ... I've just got to get out there and play to my strengths and play with the team.

"I know what I can do and I know what I can't do so I've just got to do that each week and hopefully grow with my own performances."

It might not have been word-for-word, but it appears Burgess was referring to Wilde's "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken".

Burgess said he wasn't necessarily a big reader.

"I like to get into the old coach's sayings and autobiographies and all that sort of stuff because I'm not too much of a reader," he said.

"I like that sort of motivational stuff."

The England international said he was still yet to produce his best football in Australia.

"I just need to get more games under my belt and more time with the boys, more training time as a team and more games like that, then hopefully straight away I can start playing some of my best football, that's what I'm aiming to do anyway," he said.

"I really enjoyed tonight but I probably didn't quite get into my second gear, didn't quite get into the groove as much as I'd like to."

Burgess also got to renew his acquaintance with English referee Ashley Klein, who made a point of helping him adjust to the NRL.

"He told me to stand a bit closer at second marker and then he said 'Is it a bit different to Odsal' which is my home ground in England, Bradford's ground," he said.

"It was just good experience, an unbelievable stadium (at ANZ)."

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NIXON'S HARD-WON CHANCE TO LEAD - Time

Posted: 28 Feb 2010 11:12 AM PST

COVER STORY

I know some of you have been through defeats, as I have, and had your hearts broken. It has been said that a great philosophy is not won without defeat. But a great philosophy is always won without fear.

SO said Richard Nixon to his party workers during the campaign. So he said again when he appeared before his followers to accept and savor his victory. Now he could forget the defeats, both the hairbreadth miss of 1960 and the humiliating rebuff of 1962. Now he could put behind him the fear that maybe he was, after all, a born loser. Now he could relish the fruits of unremitting labor for his party, of countless fund-raising dinners and victory banquets and formula speeches in remote towns. Now he could demonstrate to the nation—and perhaps to himself— just what his "great philosophy" is. Now, at last, he had achieved a goal that, six and eight years ago, seemed to have eluded him forever.

But Richard Milhous Nixon became President-elect of the U.S. by the narrowest of margins—so narrow that it may even impede his conduct of the office. At the beginning of his campaign, Nixon held a seemingly unassailable lead. By the time Illinois' 26 electoral votes put him over the 270 mark, it was clear that his lead had been whittled almost to the vanishing point, and that he had come close to the most bitter defeat of his career.

What had kept him from the major, decisive victory that had been so widely (and perhaps too optimistically) expected by many of his followers? In addition to his choice of Maryland's inept Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate, it was probably his closed, negative campaign. That, and a personality that has simply never come close to captivating the U.S. voter. Nixon was so far in front that his overriding concern was to avoid a serious error—hardly the sort of strategy designed to fire imaginations. But it can also be argued that the Democrats—the majority party—were bound to recover from their low point, and that Nixon had to play it safe. His aides certainly take this view. They insisted even after Nixon's narrow electoral escape that if they had to do it again, they would change nothing—including the surely damaging decision not to debate Democratic Candidate Hubert Humphrey.

Once the campaign got under way, Nixon's standing in the polls froze at the mid-40% mark, despite the Democrats' Job-like troubles. All the while, Humphrey was gaining on him, chipping away at the Wallace vote among the blue-collar workers of the big industrial states, rallying the once indifferent blacks, bringing antiwar dissidents back into the fold after they had sulked for a suitable time. When the vote tallying began, it swiftly became apparent that the Vice President had scored enough of a comeback to make the election as breathtakingly close as the 1960 cliffhanger. With more than 92% of the total popular vote counted, in fact, Nixon's plurality was fewer than 250,000 votes out of 68 million (v. Kennedy's 119,000 out of 69 million).

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D'Antoni gets snippy, says media can't coach a lick » - New York Daily News

Posted: 28 Feb 2010 01:57 PM PST

Mike D'Antoni finally showed his infamous sensitive side which we've heard so much about - via coaches, players and fellow media members - prior to Saturday's pounding at the hands of Zach Randolph and the Memphis Grizzlies.

D'Antoni went on a diatribe about his philosophy concerning when and if to foul up three points in the final seconds.

I'm still not really sure if I understand his philosophy but D'Antoni took issue with the fact that I had the audacity to question why the Knicks didn't foul Washington's JaVale McGee seconds before McGee set up Nick Young for a game-tying three in final seconds of Friday's overtime win.

Other than it being a reasonable point to bring up and besides the fact that it is occasionally the job of beat reporters to question why the Knicks keep losing - they're 20-38 by the way - D'Antoni kind of agreed with the premise after Friday's win. He said he wanted the Knicks to foul with around five seconds left as opposed to 11 seconds when the poor shooting McGee caught the inbounds pass with his back to the basket.

The one fatal flaw in D'Antoni's argument is that last Saturday the Knicks didn't foul - or really defend - Kevin Durant when he hit a game-tying three with six seconds left in Oklahoma City's overtime victory. In that game, OKC was inbounding with 12 seconds on the clock.

Whatever.

This is less about D'Antoni's strategy and more with how he is dealing with the slightest criticism. On Saturday, D'Antoni grew increasingly agitated when he addressed the matter before finally looking at me and saying, "Oh that's right, you're undefeated as a coach."

Good one, Mike.

You're absolutely correct. I have never had the privilege of coaching an NBA game and have never been in position to earn $6 million by making such life-or-death choices like deciding when or if to foul up three.

Not that it matters, but I do have the ultimate respect for coaches since it is their butt that is on the line when things don't go right.

But if I were an NBA head coach making $6 million a year I would hope that I would understand that second guessing comes with the territory. (Or did the Garden stop teaching "Hate and Don't Trust the Press 101" during their wonderful media training classes.)

Seriously, now. D'Antoni has been treated with kid's gloves for almost two years. Only recently have issues like his lack of communication with the players, his lack of attention to defense and the lack of wins come to the forefront.

That's why I was a little surprised that he felt the need to make a let-me-attempt-to-embarrass-the-reporter-in-front-of-his-peers remark by sarcastically saying that I was "undefeated as a coach."

(For the record, I was an assistant coach when my son's team won the New Jersey U11 state soccer championship. Does that count? I'm guessing probably not since I was volunteering my time.)

So Mike is dead on. Who the heck am I to question his strategy? I've never sat in the big chair.

But since Mike brought up my record, I think it's only fair that we bring up Mike's record as Knicks coach. He is - drum roll, please - 52-88. That number would make Isiah Thomas blush.

To show you how much things have changed here, the back page of one local newspaper once had Jeff Van Gundy's head in a noose after the Knicks started out 11-9.

But that's not really a fair comparison because that was at a time when everybody - Knicks players, coaches, executives, fans and media - all had higher standards. At the World's Most Famous Arena, they'll accept losing but not criticism.

Mike has every right to blow off some steam, especially at the media. There are some days when he holds three press conferences with the same group of reporters. And all the losing doesn't help matters.

He should be a vocal advocate for his organization, his players and his strategy. I get that.

But Mike also has to understand that when your team is 18 games under .500, you are going to face some criticism. It's part of the job description. Just ask Isiah, Van Gundy, Larry Brown, Lenny Wilkens, Don Chaney, Don Nelson and Pat Riley.

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Philosophy

Sunday, February 28, 2010