About This Blog

This Blog includes political and cultural views of the Right and the Left with critical commentary from time to time. The most popular feature is the odd news items from around the world - the interesting tidbits and reports of eccentric and bizarre behavior. Send your news items to adolfimktg@yahoo.com. Refer you friends to this blog. Our Internet address is: http://thingsillconsidered.blogspot.com

Following is a list of the articles added to the Blog on Sunday, August 17, 2003.

1. Professors With A Past - Ex-cons, including murderers are teaching at America's colleges and universities. Okay with you?
2. How To Speak English Good - A great tongue-in-cheek bit that will charm the grammarians among you.
3. The World's Best Explanation of Marketing for Women - If there is a more humorous explanation out there please let me know. I dare you not to laugh!
4. This Blog is Aptly Named - Editor's remarks preceding the most bizarre news story we have encountered since Lorena Bobbittt went snip, snip.

Professors With a Past

Blogster's Note: You learn that your son or daughter's college education professor murdered three people while committing an armed robbery when he was a teenager. He has done his time. What is your reaction? Test your liberal IQ with those facts which occurred earlier this year at Penn State. What do you think should happen? The professor goes on teaching as usual? You tell your child to withdraw from the class? The professor resigns? Read this condensation of an article in the illustrious Gray Lady which recently found her skirts blackened by a fiction writer posing as a reporter. If you have hackles, whatever they are, and you have a bit of a conservative streak in you, be prepared for them to rise up in alarm.

New York Times - August 9, 2003
By Waren St. John

When Stephen C. Richards, a criminology professor, steps up to the rostrum on the first day of his sociology of corrections classes at Northern Kentucky University, he usually begins his lecture with a confession and a promise.

"I'm an ex-con," Mr. Richards, who served nine years in federal prison for selling marijuana, tells his students. "I'm going to tell some stories and use some profane language. You'll read books that you might not read in other classes. And by the end of the semester, you're going to know more about prisons than you ever imagined."

Mr. Richards is a self-described "convict criminologist," one of a small, tightly knit group of ex-convict professors who are shaking up the criminal justice field by challenging some of the academic establishment's assumptions about prisons and inmates. With convictions ranging from selling heroin to armed robbery and even murder, they have tenure-track positions at public universities, attend academic conferences and act as mentors to current convicts who hope some day to join their ranks.

While there have long been isolated ex-convicts keeping a low profile in academia - last month a Pennsylvania State University education professor named Paul Krueger resigned when the university discovered he had spent 12 years in prison after pleading guilty in 1965 to a triple murder. These criminologists are the first group of ex-convict professors to organize into a scholarly movement.

The movement has sparked controversy, not so much because of its members' backgrounds as because of their ideas, which were set forth in a manifesto of sorts published this year, "Convict Criminology," which Mr. Richards edited along with Jeffrey Ian Ross, a professor of criminology at the University of Baltimore. The book's thesis is that having spent time in jail, convict criminologists have a better understanding of the criminal justice system than professors who have studied prison from the comfort of their offices. The former inmates engage in research to support their argument that incarceration is overused in the United States - which has a prison population of 2.2 million - and that prison is needlessly dehumanizing.

There are around a dozen ex-convict criminology professors around the country; another dozen in the late stages of their graduate school work, soon to become junior faculty members; and still others studying for degrees in prison. Most say they are motivated toward academia by a combination of idealism and practicality: deeply affected by the experience of prison, they share an urge to improve conditions for fellow inmates. And because getting jobs in
the private sector is difficult for those with felonies on their records, academia offers at least the chance of a career.

While a few convict criminologists have histories of violent crime, the majority went to prison in the late 1980's and early 1990's for drug offenses. They came from middle- or upper-middle-class backgrounds and entered prison with high school educations or college degrees. Daniel S. Murphy, a professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., is a typical case. After getting a degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin and starting a business, he was arrested on a marijuana charge and sentenced to five years in prison in 1994. Two years into his sentence, he said, exasperation with prison life
motivated him to start studying in jail for his master's degree in criminology.

After getting what he calls his "little Ph.D." - his "prison house diploma" - Mr. Murphy enrolled at Iowa State for graduate school. Mr. Murphy argues that he has an advantage over his mainstream peers. "I can see both sides of the razor wire," he said.

"Because we know about prison, we know what questions to ask," he continued. "`How many men are in your cell block? Are you double-celled? When we say, `Tell us about the food,' we know about the blue meat and the brown lettuce." It's this last point that has caused controversy. Many in the field reject the notion that the firsthand experience of prison makes convict criminologists any more qualified to write about the subject, and some even contend that it
can be a hindrance. Skeptics say convict criminology can be myopic, focusing exclusively on the injustices of prison life, without considering things like the experience of corrections officers, or the potential benefits of punishment.

The convict criminology movement got its start in 1997, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminologists. Charles Terry, a recovered heroin addict who spent 12 years in prison for various crimes and who is now a criminology professor at St. Louis University, said he was frustrated by what he saw as a cold, statistical approach by mainstream colleagues. He organized a panel of ex-convict professors to speak candidly about their experience in jail.

How to Speak English Good

A very clever bit submitted by DS in Greensboro who has successfully home-schooled two daughters who are now in college at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. DS is continuing the education of four more. Despite what the critics said, the kids are personable, well-adjusted young people who did above average on their SATs and are doing well at the University. Bravo to the teacher and to her brood of six. You have made a believer out of me.

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.

2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)

6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.

7. Be more or less specific.

8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.

9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

10. No sentence fragments.

11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.

12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

14. One should NEVER generalize.

15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

19. The passive voice is to be ignored.

20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.

21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.

22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.

24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

25. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.

26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.

27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

29. Who needs rhetorical questions?

30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.


And the last one...


31. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.



The World's Best Explanation of Marketing For Women

Submitted by Financial Wizard HL from Laguna Beach, CA

The buzz word in today's business world is MARKETING. However, most people often ask for a simple explanation of "Marketing." Here it is:

You're a woman and you see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, "I'm fantastic in bed," That's Direct Marketing.

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy. One of your friends goes up to him and pointing at you says, "She's fantastic in bed," That's Advertising.

You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed," That's Telemarketing.

You're at a party and see a handsome guy. You get up and straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, "May I," and reach up to straighten his tie brushing your breast lightly against his arm, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in bed," That's Public Relations.

You're at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, "I hear you're fantastic in bed," That's Brand Recognition.

You're at a party and see a handsome guy. You talk him into going home with your friend. That's a Sales Rep.

Your friend can't satisfy him so he calls you. That's Tech Support.

You're on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all these houses you're passing. So you climb onto the roof of one situated toward the center and shout at the top of your lungs, "I'm fantastic in bed!" That's junk mail.

This Blog Is Aptly Named

This Blog includes political and cultural views of the Right and the Left with critical commentary from time to time. The most popular feature may well be the odd news items from around the world - the interesting tidbits and reports of eccentric and bizarre behavior. The following news item from Malaysia may take the prize for bizarre. Ouch! This guy has outdone Lorena Snippet Bobbitt. This item was submitted by attorney WS from Greensboro, NC who seems to have an unlimited supply of such items as well as bizarre political news.

Malaysian Man Severs, Cooks and Eats Own Penis

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - A 34-year-old Malaysian man, believed to have been high on drugs, severed, cooked and ate his own penis, local media reported.

The man, who was previously diagnosed as mentally unstable, is said to have done so after having taken drugs and awoke in the middle of the night hearing voices telling him to do so. "The man then wrapped his penis in a piece of cloth, burnt and ate it," a police spokesman was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency.

He said the man realised something was wrong when he saw blood flowing profusely from his severed private part.
The man woke up his mother and was then rushed to hospital for treatment. "The man is said to be in stable condition, but was facing problems urinating as the urinary tract has been severed," he said.

Meanwhile, the mother said her son had been "mentally disturbed" since returning from a drug rehabilitation centre recently. "My son took hallucinatory pills before the incident. He once tried to commit suicide by using a pair of scissors to stab his head, but was saved," she was quoted as saying. "He also often keeps to himself in his room," said the woman, who declined to be identified.

(Blogster's Note: Looks like he may have been released just a tad too soon, don't you think? ! Got a bizarre news )
item? E-mail it to me at adolfimktg@yahoo.com)