The jig is up for us political scientists (my BA says I’m one, thanks very much): Congress is debating cutting National Science Foundation funding for a discipline that can’t decide just how “scientific” it is (or isn’t):

“The danger is that political science is moving in the direction of saying more and more about less and less,” said Joseph Nye, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, whose work has been particularly influential among American policy makers. “There are parts of the academy which, in the effort to be scientific, feel we should stay away from policy,” Mr. Nye said, that “it interferes with the science.”

In his view statistical techniques too often determine what kind of research political scientists do, pushing them further into narrow specializations cut off from real-world concerns. The motivation to be precise, Mr. Nye warned, has overtaken the impulse to be relevant.

Reminds me of the joke one of my professors tossed off regarding the very same conjecture. The gist was that, as above, a segment of the discipline’s practitioners wanted to amp up the pure statistical focus, thus emphasizing the “sci” part of poli-sci. To which Prof, decidedly on the softer social-trending side of the debate, haughtily scoffed, “The fools!”

He got a big laugh from the class, because none of us fancied ourselves as the scientist type, either in labcoats or somewhere crunching numbers. Indeed, for undergrads, you’re a political science major either because it’s the most in-line prep for pre-law and law school; or else, like me, you have an affinity for the combination of history and applied social processes.

Trying to forge a hard science out of that soup seems like a tall order, despite Congressional preference for NSF money going into pharmaceuticals and the like. Quantifying the body politic would be a lot easier if human beings, with their quirks and general irrationalities, weren’t involved.

It’s getting a bit long in the tooth, considering the events in the following recollection took place nearly 20 years ago. Nevertheless, today is Earth Day, and this blog’s tradition calls.

Once again, the backdrop: It’s 1990, in a dormitory lounge at my alma mater, with my 18-year-old self gawking at an old TV with over-the-air reception only (no cable on campus back then). The perfect ingredients for spontaneous save-the-planet action!

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 17 18 several years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then -– the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling –- that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

And, since the above seems to bother Home Shopping Network employees/fans, here’s some further clarification:

It seems to be eluding some that the episode above happened in 1990. When I was 18 years old, btw — so the “childish” insult doesn’t faze me, as I practically was still a child at that point. Also, whatever call-center procedures that are in place now most likely weren’t in effect back then. So don’t bother citing current SOP because it probably doesn’t apply.

Secondly, I never state that the operators somehow relayed those crank calls to the broadcast booth. However, you can bet those calls were being monitored from a higher source, and from there filtered to what was going on on-screen.

Lastly: Whether or not my imagined cause-and-effect really happened, the sequence is where the humor is. It still makes for a funny story, which is why I look forward to recycling it yet again next year.

Happy greening, folks!

Someone’s not letting a little thing like the Great Recession get in the way of college fundraising: An ultra-anonymous donor — who’s demanding signed affirmation that his/her identity won’t be investigated — has given $45 million to nine American universities.

The source was so secret that it triggered post-9/11 style nervousness:

Usually when schools receive anonymous donations, the school knows the identity of the benefactor but agrees to keep it secret. Not knowing who is giving the money can raise thorny problems.

William Massey, vice chancellor for alumni and development at University of North Carolina-Asheville, said the school contacted the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS to make sure the money was legal before accepting it.

“There may be an ethical problem if you knowingly accept funds from ill-gotten gains,” said [University of Colorado at] Colorado Springs’ Hutton. University officials “do due diligence and ask the appropriate questions and receive satisfactory answers.”

What’s the deep-dark fear — that Osama bin Laden is making these secret cash-dumps, and will later call in the favor by seeking asylum on campus?

By the way, did I mention that I’m starting up a new online school: PopulationStatistic.edu? That’s right, and it’s legit, or might as well be. So if that anonymous moneybags is reading this, and has a spare million or two left over, I’ll gladly send on PopStat U’s PayPal account information. And don’t worry — no questions asked, and I can keep a secret with the best of them!

Between that mystery money, and my continuing efforts to land a Blogging Fellow-based MacArthur Foundation “genius award”, I’ll soon be sufficiently funded for my largely-theoretical academic endeavors. Beats working, anyway!

The couple of times I saw trailers for new release Spinning Into Butter, I got the distinct impression that it was made from a script that had been lying around since the ’90s, when college-campus racial tensions were (more of a) hot topic.

Lo and behold, that’s pretty much the case, as the film is adapted from a stage play of the same name that was first produced nine years ago (so, close enough).

Not that this spoils my movie-going plans for this weekend. Even if I had intended to take in this type of overwrought drama, I’d go more directly to the source and rent Higher Learning.

Call me old and crotchety enough at 38 to be sufficiently out of touch with the college-campus mentality. Yet I can’t help but draw a parallel between the latest carping about how students feel entitled to a minimum grade of A or B just for showing up to class, and the late student takeover of New York University’s cafeteria which was just quashed in a practically comical manner.

Specifically: I’m guessing the busted protesters are going to be demanding straight-A’s for the semester, to reflect their commitment (or, failing that, to compensate for their anguish, in similar vein with the campus myth about getting a 4.0 for a roommate’s death).

In both cases, the presumption is that a sustained-enough period of whining (sorry, make that “effort”) will result in accedence by the authority. Obviously, the former mindset fed into the latter effort.

I’m wondering what other scattershot agenda items the NYU dorm-commandos would have added, had they held out an extra day or two. First it was affordable tuition and transparent fiscal reporting, then the curveball of Gaza-related financial/educational aid (which abruptness of appearance pretty well cooked the goose)… What was next up? Demands for free MP3 downloads on university servers?

I was, in fact, lurking around NYU over the past couple of days, doing my usual work/client shuffle. I didn’t have time or desire to go in for a closer look. The only outward indicator I got of the action was an unusual stretch of trash strewn across a half-block of 3rd Avenue early this afternoon; I’m not sure it was related, but I given the proximity, I assumed some protesting sympatico had a hissy-fit and made the mess.

Vive la revolution…

At the risk of enabling in-classroom distraction, colleges and universities are supplying incoming students with iPod Touches and/or iPhones for use as wi-fi learning tools.

This isn’t too surprising, as the higher-ed institutions have been enamored with Apple’s shiny pods for years: The pre-wireless iteration of the iPod was doled out at Duke University and elsewhere to provide audio instruction.

I do question why iPhones are even in the picture, though:

At each college, the students who choose to get an iPhone must pay for mobile phone service. Those service contracts include unlimited data use. Both the iPhones and the iPod Touch devices can connect to the Internet through campus wireless networks. With the iPhone, those networks may provide faster connections and longer battery life than AT&T’s data network. Many cellphones allow users to surf the Web, but only some newer ones have Wi-Fi capability.

Why saddle students who assuredly already have a cellphone with another phone plan, just to get a mobile device that can access the campus’ already-present wi-fi cloud? This is a situation where the iTouch is an ideal device: It’ll always have a strong connection to the Web — particularly in a classroom — and therefore no need for a built-in 3G or Edge signal. The only other thing missing would be a camera, which would be unnecessary in this setting. It makes no sense at all for the school to invest in iPhones when the iPod Touch will do the job.

On Apple’s part, while there’s probably more money to be make in snagging college iPhone customers, they can really position the iTouch as a learning tool. It is indeed a more preferable alternative, for both students and professors, to lugging a full-sized notebook computer around.

Is it an indicator of how far back in my personal rear-view mirror the drinking-age debate is that I’m not at all convinced of the merits behind the Amethyst Initiative, an organization advocating a switch back to 18-year-old imbibing and founded by — improbably enough — college presidents?

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.

Not that all school administrators are onboard:

McCardell cites the work of Alexander Wagenaar, a University of Florida epidemiologist and expert on how changes in the drinking age affect safety. But Wagenaar himself sides with MADD in the debate.

The college presidents “see a problem of drinking on college campuses, and they don’t want to deal with it,” Wagenaar said in a telephone interview. “It’s really unfortunate, but the science is very clear.”

Another scholar who has extensively researched college binge-drinking also criticized the presidents’ initiative.

“I understand why colleges are doing it, because it splits their students, and they like to treat them all alike rather than having to card some of them. It’s a nuisance to them,” said Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health.

But, “I wish these college presidents sat around and tried to work out ways to deal with the problem on their campus rather than try to eliminate the problem by defining it out of existence,” he said.

And in fact, my Spidey-cynic tells me that the college presidents pushing the “debate” are engaging in subtle marketing for the much-sought-after incoming students: When word gets out that they’re pushing for a lower drinking age, I’m sure it’ll carry weight in many a final enrollment decision. To wit:

“Yeah dude, Tufts was just my back-up safety school, but when I heard that their prez signed a petition to change the drinking law to 18, I moved them to the top of the list! Party!”

Gotta keep those matriculation numbers up, y’know.

In the same spirit as last year’s self-plagiarism, I’m commemorating today’s Earth Day observance with a blog rerun.

The year is 1990, the place is a dorm lounge in my alma mater, and the source material is an old TV with over-the-air reception only (pre-cable). Throw in my general 18-year-old boredom, and you get this improbable save-the-planet vignette:

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 17 18 years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then–the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling–that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

Normally I’d let this recollection stand as is. But doing so seems to confuse some people. Therefore, I feel compelled to include something in the way of context and clarification. (I doubt the offended Home Shopping drones will even read this far down, but at least I’ve got it down for the record, and won’t have to bother with further response.)

It seems to be eluding some that the episode above happened in 1990. When I was 18 years old, btw — so the “childish” insult doesn’t faze me, as I practically was still a child at that point. Also, whatever call-center procedures that are in place now most likely weren’t in effect back then. So don’t bother citing current SOP because it probably doesn’t apply.

Secondly, I never state that the operators somehow relayed those crank calls to the broadcast booth. However, you can bet those calls were being monitored from a higher source, and from there filtered to what was going on on-screen.

Lastly: Whether or not my imagined cause-and-effect really happened, the sequence is where the humor is. It still makes for a funny story, which is why I look forward to recycling it yet again next year.

Whenever I copy-and-paste an old post to create a new one, I get the feeling that I’m copping out.

But since today is Earth Day, I’ll frame this post as a prime example of what can be achieved by renewing your own resources — intellectual-property style. (It’s better than saying I’m swiping content from myself.)

So here it is, same as last year, albeit with a couple of minor diction edits: My college-era instance of sticking it to the man for good ol’ Mama Earth. Enjoy!

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 17 years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then–the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling–that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

Having attended an NCAA Division II school, I have a soft spot in my heart for the equivalent of the lower-minor leagues in college sports.

That said, the brewing storm over the subdivision of the NCAA’s Division III into upper and lower tiers strikes me as pretty pointless.

“At the convention, there were people walking around saying, ‘I’ll never join a Division IV,’” [Williams College athletic director Lisa] Melendy said. “No one wants to be in Division IV. The name has such a substandard sound. It sounds like you’ve been demoted.”

You’re already talking about the basement; would getting shifted from third- to fourth-string be that much of a hit? After you get past Division I and I-A, primetime collegiate sports are largely theoretical.

Then again, things could go even lower:

No one wants to tackle the prickly subject of what to call the new divisions. A Division IV could be avoided with a Division III-A and Division III-AA. Others have proposed using proper names for the divisions. And some administrators suggested there would be enough discord that the N.C.A.A. should be prepared not just for a Division IV but also a Division V.

I think all this splintering will prompt ESPN to start spinning off parallel sub-networks, just to keep up on coverage.

Microsoft’s sorry excuse for an unPod, the Zune, comes with a curious product slogan:

Welcome to the Social.

It’s clever, in that it implies a community phenomenon for the media player, which of course you’d want to join. It also boosts the much-hyped Zune-to-Zune wi-fi file transfer capability that Microsoft has used as the key differentiator from the iPod.

For me, though, the first thing that came to mind wasn’t really the uncommon noun definition, ala “ice cream social”.

Rather, it was one of the outcomes of my favorite college drinking game, Three Man. As in, roll a 9, and then call out “SOCIAL!” as the cue for everyone in the game to take a swig.

I’m guessing someone in Zune marketing dredged up some beer-soaked memories of their college drinking days when they settled on that tagline. College kids have been a primary grassroots market for promoting the Zune, so I’m sure that consideration went into it as well. Positioning an mp3 player as a drinking accessory? It’s got to work better than the Zune’s cruddy design and features…

I can only assume that Rite Aid’s agreement to absorb the Brooks/Eckerd drugstore group for $2.6 billion will result in the disappearance of both the Brooks and Eckerd store brands.

If so, as an alumus of Eckerd College, I’m happy as a clam. Not that I encountered many instances when someone would ask, upon finding out where I went to school, why I decided to go into pharmaceuticals. And the withdrawal of Eckerd stores from Florida, combined with their rather thin presence in New York (as far as I’ve seen), pretty much eliminated that possibility anyway. Still, I’d rather there be one, and only one, Eckerd brandname out there.

Now, I’ve got to cross my fingers that my alma mater doesn’t pull a fast one and rename itself “Rite Aid Tech” or something…

It was questionable that the Jean Coutu Group persisted with the Eckerd brand after buying the remains of the operations in 2004, when CVS simply assimilated its half under its own banner right away (including in Florida, where Eckerd Drugs started its life). The chain’s expansion up the East Coast didn’t build much equity, and ultimately put the company in a position where it had to sell itself off. Now, less than a decade later, it’s about to be snuffed out completely.

How’s that small college supposed to compete with big universities to attract prospective students? Increasingly, they’re instituting (and re-instituting) NCAA football programs, which are considered quick-fix galvanizing components of the long-lasting college experience.

“When you recruit a halfback, you get a few of his male friends, maybe his sister and his sister’s boyfriend, too,” said JoAnne Boyle, president of Seton Hill University. A 123-year-old former women’s institution in Greensburg, Pa., Seton Hill added football last year.

“I could have started a spiffy new major of study, spent a lot of money on lab equipment and hired a few new high-powered professors,” Dr. Boyle said. “I might have gotten 25 more students for that. And I couldn’t have counted on that major still being popular in 15 years.

“Instead, I started a football team, brought in hundreds of paying students, added a vibrant piece to our campus life and broadened our recognition factor. And in the long history of American higher education, one thing you can count on is football’s longevity. Football is here to stay.”

Come for the pigskin, stay for the bachelor’s degree!

The funny thing is that for years, football programs at smaller schools were an endangered species. Because an institution with only a couple thousands students couldn’t hope to put together a top-flight Division I squad, and that Div. II and III competition wasn’t considered noteworthy enough to be an attraction for current students or alumni, football often became hard to justify on a cost basis.

What’s changed? I guess the breadth and depth of football fandom has reaped a lucrative market for all things gridiron. In addition to the appeal for the student body, clothing merchandising has a huge appetite for a variety of team colors/logos, and as long as the school/team really exists, it’s got the cache to be a strong seller. There’s the revenue stream a small school needs.

This trend soon may be affecting me. Dinky little Eckerd College, my alma mater, has been on a sports-promotion kick ever since new President Donald Eastman came on board a couple of years back. The school’s never had a football squad, and was founded with the intention of never having one. Sports has purposely been a secondary part of the Eckerd experience; the most glory it gets is when its Division II baseball and/or hoops teams make a little noise in their conferences every few years.

But when I drove through the St. Petersburg campus a couple of weeks ago, during a brief visit, I spied a couple of goalposts set up on the far edge of the school’s athletic complex! I figured that was a harbinger of things to come, and this article tells me I’m right.

Hey college grads: Expect to make slave wages in your first job out of school. That’s not news, I know.

Just make sure they’re not too slavish, because the salary you settle for in that first stint could set a trend for you, career-wise:

These data confirm that people essentially cannot close the wage gap by working their way up the company hierarchy. While they may work their way up, the people who started above them do, too. They don’t catch up. The recession graduates who actually do catch up tend to be the ones who forget about rising up the ladder and, instead, jump ship to other employers.

Your pay range is established early, and becomes part of your permanent record, so to speak. I can attest to that: I think I swapped monetary compensation for security too often in the past, and consequently, found it hard to credibly demand more money in subsequent jobs. And naturally, one of the first things prospective employers look at salary history, as a shorthand assessment of someone’s worth and talent (fair measure or not). When matched against your peers, it really becomes a handicap.

Of course, “jumping ship” to another company strictly for advancement opportunity is standard practice nowadays. At least for white-collar workers, the chances of committing to one company for your entire working career are laughably slim (unless, say, you happen to own said company — and even that’s no guarantee). So a payscale legacy reinforces the need to be nimble in personal career development. But again, that salary history does follow you around.

So what’s a fiscally-disadvantaged young worker to do? Aside from free agency, s/he can go the office tell-all blog route, which is fraught with reprimandable risk but also offers lucrative satisfaction:

Busted bloggers like Jessica Cutler (a former Capitol Hill intern whose blog, Washingtonienne, is now a novel), Nadine Haobsh (a former beauty editor whose blog Jolie in NYC earned her a two-book deal) and Jeremy Blachman (a lawyer whose blog Anonymous Lawyer is being released as “Anonymous Lawyer: A Novel” this summer) were all interns, entry-level employees and worker bees who traded up on in-the-trade secrets.

The generation entering the work world has noticed.

“Everybody I’ve read about that got fired for having a blog is on to such great things,” said Kelly Kreth, 36, who was fired from her job as the marketing and public relations director at a real estate firm in Manhattan last fall for blogging about her co-workers.

“I’ve had my online diary for six years, and it is very important to me,” Ms. Kreth said, calling the firing the best thing that happened to her. “It led to me opening my own business and making triple what I was making before.”

A book or movie deal is not a bad way to exact revenge. Of course, for every jackpot, there are thousands of unemployed crapouts.

My advice: Stay in school for as long as you can. You can blog from your dorm as easily as you can from a cubicle, and the meal plan is probably better!

Today’s Earth Day was a pretty miserable one here in New York: Non-stop rain, with a temperature dip approaching winterish weather.

Where’s the love, Mother Gaia?

I suppose you have to take the deary days along with the sun-shiney ones. Anyway, I’ll take any excuse to laze around the house all day.

In honor of the holiday, I’ll go into blog reruns. This one goes way back, both in terms of recounting and actual action. Enjoy my college-era episode of sticking it to the man, Earth Day-style:

My favorite Earth Day memory is a prank I played 13 16 years ago. I was sitting in my dorm lounge with a dormmate. We were flipping through the channels (no cable TV in the dorms back then–the dark ages!!), and catching a couple of news reports telling us it was Earth Day. Then we land on Home Shopping Network, just as they start rolling out their fur collection for display and sale.

It hit me: Furs? They’re hawking freakin’ furs on Earth Day? Come on!

Now, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, a hard-core environmentalist or animal-rights advocate. I’m sympathetic with those philosophies, to a point, but I eat meat, wear leather, etc. like your average dude. Nevertheless, some part of my sensibilities was offended by seeing such a bizarre juxtaposition. I think I was offended by the stupidity, or more likely ignorance, on display by HSN.

So, I decided to do something. I got my phone, dialed up the HSN order line, and as soon as the customer service drone answered, I yelled, “EARTH DAY! FUR IS MURDER! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!!”. I did it a couple more times after that. Then I got my dormmate to call too, on his phone; he did a very low-key version of same spiel (sans yelling–that was my schtick).

We had our fun, and decided to keep watching the channel to see if our childish actions had any on-air effect. Lo and behold, about 10 minutes after the last of our calls, the show host mentioned, “By the way, folks, today is Earth Day”, and then abruptly switched from the fur display to something else. We laughed our asses off! It looked like we had stuck it to the man!

Don’t mention it, Mama Earth.

And speaking of Ybor City, I recently got word that one of its long-time institutions, The Masquerade, has abruptly gone out of business.

Perhaps fittingly, a crappy-looking MySpace page replaces it. As for the actual physical location, I’m sure something will spring up from the ashes.

Since I hadn’t stepped into the place in ages, I can’t say I’m extremely broken up about the fade-out. Despite a fairly diverse booking schedule, Masquerade tended not to get packed unless death metal acts played — and that’s not even remotely the type of scene I go for. And, being far more of a concert venue than an actual bar, it really wasn’t what I liked about going to Ybor.

My nostalgic ties to the place reside in the distant past — some 16 years ago, in my freshman year in college. I recollected the brief experience once on this blog; by way of a eulogy, I’ll repost the pertinent part here:

I’m old enough to remember when The Masquerade was the only thing that existed, club-wise, in Ybor. Back in 1990, some friends at school dragged me out there for a rare off-campus clubbing opp. I was new to the area, and the drive seemed horrendously long from south St. Pete; for a long while after, I was convinced we had driven most of the way to Orlando…

Not much more to relate about that long-ago night. I remember a bunch of us — maybe 7 or 8 people — piled into what had to be one of the last working 1960s-era VW Bugs in existence, and drove the twenty-odd miles up I-275/I-4. I believe I drove part of the way, either going there or coming back; don’t remember precisely why. I remember there were lots of red velvet couches all over the place, which must have long since disappeared by the time the Ybor revival had really kicked off. I remember there was nothing around the club back then but blocks full of boarded-up storefronts and warehouses — again, this was just before the district was revived, and it was a vaguely scary place to be. And today, I don’t remember who it was I went there with; I think most of them left after my freshman year (I can barely visualize the face of the girl who owned the Bug; her name’s long since faded from my brain cells).

Freshman seminars, where first-year students get an intimate introduction to college instruction, are suddenly en vogue and almost a necessity for schools luring students.

It’s a way to stimulate the fresh fish early, fortifying them for the next four years:

John Gardner, founder of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, says he can think of just one downside.

“It is possible you get a student motivated and stimulated with an almost graduate-like experience,” said Gardner, who advises colleges on such programs. “And then — bang! — you turn them loose on the real first year, which isn’t anything like that.”

This all sounds very familiar to me. Maybe it should: My alma mater has been doing it for decades. Eckerd College’s freshman-only Autumn Term was designed to break in first-year students gently, focusing on interactive learning. It’s also meant to start a student off on a mentoring relationship, since the Autumn Term instructor often winds up being the academic advisor for at least the first year.

So, it looks like my little college has been ahead of the curve for a long while now. It’s a shame to see EC lose what had been a unique selling point; maybe it should really start emphasizing how long it’s been in the freshman seminar business.

News that the U.S. Postal Service has achieved debt-free status for the first time ever does not make me wonder about the usual postal-related things, like how much a stamp’s going to cost next year (39 cents — like it matters, as I can’t remember the last time I sent a letter) or whether or not Saturday postal delivery is still subject to being cut.

No, I’m wondering about my friend and former roommate, Schmu. He’s been working as a high-rolling consultant for the USPS for the past couple of years. I imagine one of his objectives was to get the operation out of the red. Could Schmu have been behind this stunning turnaround? If so, I’m sure to hear about it.

(No, I’m not going to reveal his real name here. But if you’re really interested…)

Don’t know how I missed this: Dennis Lehane, of “Mystic River” fame (probably moreso for the movie adaptation), has come back to teach at his (and mine) alma mater, Eckerd College, with plans to boost the school’s creative writing program into a national attraction.

First step is adding some zip to this January’s “Writers in Paradise” conference at EC:

Stephen King, among the most acclaimed modern scary-story writers, will teach a one-day class at the conference.

Lehane has written a play, Coronado, which he will read at the conference. Eckerd will then put on the play in April at American Stage, Lehane said.

The Dorchester, Mass., native said he has another “ace in the hole” in regard to the conference, but doesn’t want to reveal it yet.

Let me dispel what you’re probably thinking: No, I’m not that “ace in the hole”. I’m probably busy that night, anyway.

Swirlings around Eckerd’s writing program always interest me. One of the reasons I went to the school — and thus, came to live in Tampa Bay — was the strength of that program. I didn’t wind up staying with it; I figured I didn’t necessarily need a degree in writing. But I’ve still got a soft spot for it.

Ah… I cannot tell you what a warm, fuzzy feeling I got from reading about the Florida Marlins batboy who heaved his guts out from the old gallon-of-milk-in-sixty-seconds trick.

Because college just wouldn’t have been the same without that scam, along with the classic Wonderbread challenge. And we never even had to offer the princely sum of $500; I doubt more than 10 bucks was ever wagered.

Of course, some joker’s always upping the ante in this arena:

The Saltine Challenge: Ingest six Saltine crackers in 60 seconds (Note: All challenges must occur without the help of water or any other digestive lubricants)…

The Cinnamon Challenge: Ingest one teaspoon of cinnamon in 60 seconds (Note: cinnamon sugar is not acceptable)…

The Saltine Challenge No. 2: Ingest four saltines in 60 seconds AND then whistle.
The Twinkies Challenge: Ingest three twinkies in 60 seconds.
The Wendy’s Challenge: Put the entire contents of a Wendy’s kids meal into a blender (small hamburger, fries and Sprite), and ingest it in five minutes.

Hard to believe why anyone would hate us for our freedom…

I had forgotten about the controversy caused by Bow Wow Wow over its Manet tribute album cover, some twenty(!) years ago.

Actually, I’m not sure I’d forgotten about it, as much as just feeling its residual effects. I remember a big deal being made over lead singer Annabella Lwin being so young (15 during the band’s brief heyday), but I don’t think I recall this specific uproar.

Anyway, judge for yourself:

And a bonus trivial tidbit: I found out that my alma mater hosted a Bow Wow Wow concert back in the early ’80s (good luck confirming that; even yearbook records for Eckerd College from that period tend to be sketchy).