poor grades?

I read a blurb today that one of Harvard's All-Ivy guards on the basketball team has to leave the school (or at least the team) because of poor grades. Now, can someone explain to me how that works at Harvard? Does that mean he didn't make the honors list?

Maybe he kept showing up at MIT lectures by accident. )

How does it work at cornell?

Professors give C's, D's and F's more frequently than A's. How does it work at Clarkson?

I seriously doubt our professors give F's more often than A's.

BTW, did anyone else go to a school district that gave E's and not F's? Mine (District 3 Long Island, Huntington) did. I think it had to do with self-esteem (i.e., F = "Failure", although by extension what did they think E meant, "Easy Going"?).

Wines?

I think Adam meant that, cumulatively, there are more C's, D's and F's given than A's.

Exactly!

Yeah, my school district (Central Bucks, near Philly) gave E's and F's for at least one year. F was the usual failing grade; E wasn't given too often but was meant to acknowledge the student who at least put some effort into the course, even though he/she didn't pass it (so E stood for "ehh, you tried." I don't believe there was any difference cume-wise between an E and an F. No, I don't know what the point was, other than self-Esteem.

I still don't think it's true that there are more C's, D's, and F's at Cornell than A's. I think Cornell's curve is skewed very heavily towards A's and B's. (I know of no one at Cornell during my time there that had a GPA below 3.0 for their whole four years.) C's are outliers, D's and F's virtually impossible to get without some effort.

Obviously this is just my personal observation. I challenge someone to produce some hard evidence to refute it.

[q](I know of no one at Cornell during my time there that had a GPA below 3.0 for their whole four years.) C's are outliers, D's and F's virtually impossible to get without some effort.[/q]

*giggle* I guess I did work pretty hard at it.

Luckily, I'm taking law school a little more seriously.

Beeeej

Five seconds on Google produced:

Data

Data cataloguing grade distribution between 1965 and 2000 reveals that the number of A's awarded to Cornell students has more than doubled in percentage while the percentage of grades in the B, C, D and F ranges has consequently dropped.

In 1965, 17.5 percent of grades distributed to students were A's, while in 2000, A's constituted over 40 percent of the grades received by Cornell undergraduates. This dramatic data strongly suggests that the University is experiencing the phenomenon of grade inflation.

[www.cornelldailysun.com]

See, there's no need to look anything up when you can make a correct generalization from personal experience alone

[Q]In 1965, 17.5 percent of grades distributed to students were A's[/Q]Yeah, back in the good old days when an A was an A.

From my personal experience in large science classes, at least half the class gets a B- or lower. The median is usually set exactly at a B/B- or C+/B-. We are graded strictly off of the median by the total standard deviation. I don't know what kind of classes you and your friends took, but I know for a fact that getting a dev. in a science class is not all that easy. You do the math and tell me the percentage of the class that gets an A.

(I know of no one at Cornell during my time there that had a GPA below 3.0 for their whole four years.) C's are outliers, D's and F's virtually impossible to get without some effort.

That was definitely not the situation during my time at Cornell. Remember though, there were more fraternities.

I'm pre-med, and Adam (who I guess is too?) hit the nail right on the head there. They make it quite difficult for us.

Right on Adam.

My transcript has many grades resulting from that damn dev below the mean - yes assorted C's ... and even 2 D's. Luckily I took some language classes (where I'd estimate that at least 80% of the class got some sort of A) to help balance it out (but not quite). I know many bio, chem, math, engineering or physics people with GPA's below 3.0 ... and not for lack of trying.

Well, first of all, you made a statement about the University as a whole which you have now limited to a small range of classes. Yes, large introductory science and math classes tend to be graded to a lower median. But once you get past those, into smaller upper-level classes, medians tend to rise (often there is no forced curve at all in those classes). If you look at Chris's stats above, 40% of grades across the University are now in the A range.

And since people like data, I just looked up the breakdown of Cornell GPAs (courtesy of the Law School Admissions Council). 76% are at 3.0 or above.

I think there is little question that Cornell, like most schools, has experienced grade inflation. Fortunately, at Cornell, unlike Harvard, this inflation is primarily nominal. Our grades are higher across the board, but we don't pretend that higher numerical grades mean we are all now honors students. 40% of people get A's, but an A doesn't mean what it used to.

[q]And since people like data, I just looked up the breakdown of Cornell GPAs (courtesy of the Law School Admissions Council). 76% are at 3.0 or above.[/q]

Is that the breakdown of Cornell GPAs, or the breakdown of Cornell GPAs among law school applicants? 'cause there's gonna be a serious difference.

Beeeej

So, are 24% of Cornell GPAs above a 3.7?

Let's just say I know from rankings that 25% of ECE's GPAs are above a 3.6... personally, I'd rather have a life

Adam, when you said "A" I assumed you were pulling in A minuses too. And remember that GPA's above a C+ would go all the way down to 2.3.

Beeeej, I think you are right, that 76% figure might just be for law school applicants. In that case, we can still stand on Chris's figure of 40% A's. I can't imagine that there would be more than 40% in the C, D, and F range (in fact, I know that there aren't -- that would make the curve some kind of weird bimodal distribution)

Honestly, Graham, do you really think that 40% of the grades are A's? If that is true then there must be majors at this school that are complete jokes to make up for the ones that are not. Let me know how it is possible for 40% of the grades to be A's and still have only 76% above a 3.00. Also if you are assuming that the pool of applicants to law school has a lower GPA than the average Cornelian, you are speaking volumes about your peers and profession.

Where on earth do you get the idea that he thinks that the figure for law school applicants is lower than for other Cornellians?

Beeeej

The article Chris cited above:

[www.cornelldailysun.com]

jibes very well with the experiences of my friends in academia. Consider that professors can buy insurance against being sued by failed students over their "lost career opportunities."

This is one of the very few "gee whiz the world's going to hell these days" whines that's actually real.

I before b, except when its supposed to be a v.

Melissa wrote:

I know many bio, chem, math, engineering or physics people with GPA's below 3.0 ... and not for lack of trying.

*raises hand*

Thanks, Beeeej. Obviously GPA's for law school applicants will be higher, on average, than other students. And yes, I do honestly believe that at least 40% of grades across all undergraduate classes are in the A range (A+, A, A-).

Right now you are making an argument about science classes (particularly large science classes). This has almost no bearing on the original topic here--athletes' grades--since the vast majority of our players are business majors in Ag.

Jeffrey "Beeeej" Anbinder '94 wrote:

Where on earth do you get the idea that he thinks that the figure for law school applicants is lower than for other Cornellians?

Well, between YOUR undergrad grades... and MY undergrad grades...

And in business.......

No one gives a flying f*** what your gpa was in school. I have bosses who went to both "better" and "worse" schools than Cornell and I'm sure got a wide range of grades. I've seen 4.0 gpa kids from Yale and Princeton fired because of failure to get the job done. It's all about a) who you know and b) what you did for the firm today.

Many, many firms take the, "Show me the kid with good instincts and a solid work ethic and I'll develope his business accumen" approach. Which is good. I'll take the guy who can sell my product in boardrooms, over the guy who got an A in his ARME stats class. I believe that many neccesary business skills can be learned through athletics, so in a way it almost seems much more important for future success than does craming for tests just to get a good gpa.

Yep, the day you start your first real job out of college, all the grades you ever got become completely irrelevant to the rest of your existence, unless you temporarily climb back into the academia womb.

Had I known this as an undergrad I would have had a lot more fun with no deletrious effects to my future life.

At this point I would regard all GPAs over 3.5 as a sign of "missing the point."

"... [Q] all the grades you ever got become completely irrelevant to the rest of your existence... [/Q]

Not necessarily true. From last week's New York Law Journal:

"Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher requires all prospective new lawyers to rank near the top of their law school classes. This requirement also applies to seasoned partners many years out of law school. One 47-year-old partner who recently interviewed to join Gibson Dunn's 140-lawyer New York office "had more than $7 million in highly portable business," said a legal recruiter who asked to remain unnamed. "They turned him down because of his grades in law school." Other headhunters have similar stories."

Yes, CULater, but does that seem smart to you?

And I would argue that this case is the exception to the rule. Not only because "law" is different than "general business" (for many reasons which we need not go into), but because most firms aren't about to do this.

It doesn't seem smart to me but I understand the rationale for it. IIRC, the article goes on to discuss how there are other firms that take that approach, in part to foster a spirit of "intellectual superiority" within the firm i.e. if you work there, you work with only the brightest people, so why would you want to go anywhere else to work? I guess it's sort of a way to create firm spirit.

In any case, I have to believe that there are other examples in other fields as well where your college performance follows you around, e.g. boutique investment banks.

But HR satisfaction metrics indicate that the number one employee retention variable is direct manager satisfaction. In other words, "is he/she a jerk or not." Number two has to do with compensation. Number three has to do with office culture (i.e.--can I wear jeans? do we have happy hours?). I don't give a rat's ass that my boss did well in his ethnobiology or wine tasting class 20 years ago if he's a jerk to me now.

I guess you could make the argument that people who accept offers at these "grade important" firms are the kinds of people for whom intellectual superiority is key. Best of luck to them.

Graham, while I won't argue with your empirical data, I have to disagree with the generalizations you make. Although you may not know anyone with a GPA under 3.0, that doesn't mean they don't exist. Besides, how many GPAs of other people do you really know? I find it surprising to hear that 40% of grades given at Cornell are As. Too bad I missed out on all those classes. I think I got 2 As the whole time I was there. Less than 5% of my classes. But I digress. I also disagree that the *vast* majority of athletes at Cornell are business/AEM majors. Maybe on the hockey team, maybe even the football team, but look at the rest of the sports. I'm confident you will find plenty of other majors. I don't know what your definition of vast is. Anyway, the point is, this guy got booted off the bball team. Something tells me the sports teams have different standards than Harvard itself, because Harvard hates to kick people out for academic reasons.

We're what statisticians call "outliers," Josh.

Beeeej

For whatever historical interest it may have, Cornell used a 0-100 grading scheme through 1962-3 (maybe 1963-4--I'm too lazy to find my transcript). At that time you needed an 85 to make Dean's List in engineering, and that would put you in something like the top 20-25%.

When I graduated in '70, there was a sheet showing GPA by quartile which Cornell used to send out with grad school applications. 2.90 was the 75th percentile, i.e. top 25 % of class. I'm not sure if that was for Cornell as a whole or the Arts school. In Chem 107 I remember Professor Sienko telling us the curve would be 10% A's, 15% B's, 50% C's, 15% D's and 10% F's. Times have certainly changed.

This whole discussion was in response to:

[Q]Professors give C's, D's and F's more frequently than A's.[/Q]

I questioned that statement based on my personal experience. Chris backed it up with statistics printed in the Sun.

Since then, people have been making arguments about: (1) how hard science classes are, (2) how grades don't really mean anything, and (3) how their GPA's, often many years ago, were below 3.0.

I still have yet to see any evidence, on par with Chris's stats, that Adam '04 made a true statement, about all undergratuate classes at Cornell today.


Jason, I realized after posting that I probably lumped together too many people in my comment about athlete's majors. Yes, there are athletes in every major at Cornell (though those in the "major," spectator sports -- bball, hockey, football-- do tend to disproportionately cluster in certain disciplines). My main point was supposed to be this: all of your arguments about how rough it was to be pre-med, etc., do not answer the real question about grading policies across the whole university.

I also did not mean to imply that there aren't people out there with GPA's below 3.0. I know there are (and many of my friends certainly flirted with the mark). My point was that if everyone I knew had GPA's over 3.0, then maybe C's aren't as common as Adam suggested.

Not in the science classes. It is still that way.

Adam '01 --

Like it or not, grades are unbelievably important in the legal profession. Why that is, I'm not totally sure, but you can't get into a top firm--no matter where you go to law school--without the grades. And, knowing some guys going to Gibson Dunn, the firms keep that pressure on until the day you graduate. If you ever fall below their rigid cut-off, your offer is revoked.

Graham
(A 1L still waiting for his first semester grades to come back )

Graham '02--

But you'll see that I separated "law" from "general business" above in my notes to CULater. If we categorize law as one industry in American business out of the thousands, I think we'll find that it differs from the vast majority of other industries in this regard. It's an industry (correct me if I'm wrong) that rightly relies on liberal arts scholarship more than others. Would you agree with that?

--The Guy Sitting Next To You This Weekend At Bright

I dunno about "liberal arts scholarship" per se. But the law still has some pretenses to being a "learned" profession, which might begin to explain the focus on grades.

(And by the way, Adam, if I get my grades within the next couple days as expected, sitting next to me on Saturday might not be such a pleasant experience. )

I cannot refute the statistics. I find it hard to believe that only 8% of Cornell graduates have honors ( [www.boston.com] ), while 40 % of the grades issued are A's, and a full 24% of applicants to law school form Cornell to Cornell have GPA's less than a 3.0. Of these people you think, [Q] Obviously GPA's for law school applicants will be higher, on average, than other students.
[/Q] You are implying that more than 24% of the Cornell population has below a 3.0. You are contradicting your argument assuming you are assuming a normal overall distribution.

Well, first of all you have to recognize how honors are awarded at Cornell. You can have a 4.1 and not graduate with honors if you choose not to write a thesis.

Second, I see no contradiction there. Looking at a GPA alone cannot tell you the breakdown of a person's grades. A 3.0 can be 4 B's. It can also be an A, 2 B's, and a C. It can be Two A's and two C's. So, knowing where people fall relative to the 3.0 lines doesn't tell me how many C's they've got. You can actually have a GPA below 3.0 and never get a C (striaight B minuses = 2.7 for example). So I would argue that is very possible for more than 25% to fall below 3.0 and still have, numerically, more A's than C's, D's, and F's awarded

YGraham Meli '02 wrote:

Well, first of all you have to recognize how honors are awarded at Cornell. You can have a 4.1 and not graduate with honors if you choose not to write a thesis.

Yes, and if you have a 4.0 you graduate "with distinction". Because the globe was interested in magna, summa, etc, I assume the journalist did a halfway competent job and reported the comparable statistic, regardless of name. Put another way, I'm assuming the reporter isn't an idiot and that the 8% represents the number of people at Cornell that graduate with distinction, not the percentage of people that turned in honors theses.

Okay dude. Chill. I realize that there are more A's given than C's, D's, and F's. I have been ball busting. Just to let everyone know. I did a bit of analysis on my own. Of the 326 classes I looked at on the spring 2001 median grade report(1st 6 pages), there were 165 classes with A's(50.6%), 158 with B's(48.5%), and 3 with C's(0.9%). Number of grades given: A+'s=8, A's=1510, A-'s=4338, B+'s=6382, B's=6069, B-'s=1683, C+'s=26, C's=59. Average number of students/class: A+'s=8, A's=28.5, A-'s=39.4, B+'s=61.4, B's=131.9, B-'s=210.4, C+'s=26, C's=29. Percentage of total grades given: A+'s=0.0004%, A's=7.5%, A-'s=21.6, B+'s=31.8%, B's=30.2%, B-'s=8.4%, C+'s=0.13%, C's=0.3%. Total percentage of grades given: A's=29.1312%, B's=70.4060%, and C's=0.4234%. The average median grade was 3.2934, and the median grade of the median grades was a B+(3.30). This isn't totally accurate by any means, but it should be pretty close overall. The funny thing is, if you look at the classes by median grade you come up with 50.6% A's, but if you look at percentage bases on total grades given it significantly falls to 29.1312% A's.

That is hard to believe Adam. 10 for 10??

I was a Chem E and I remember the chemistry department had a program for normalizing the distribution of the grades before applying the A's etc. They took standard deviation into account (unlike the Math department, Prof. Rand) and my recollection was that many of the Chem courses had the curve centered between B+ and A-. I graduated in '74 as my name here implies.

I thought that this was a fair compromise at the time. That is a compromise between old fashioned grading where C's were average and taking account the general abilities and work ethic of the students in question.

So I can't believe that there are 10 F's for every 10 A's in these days of somewhat inflated grades.

Don't worry, Adam. I am perfectly "chill." I just enjoy arguing about things that aren't that important And thanks for the thorough statistical analysis. I actually thought there would be considerably more C's than that (half a percent -- wow).

John, I don't think the 8% honors stat could include distinction. Distinction (at least in Arts) goes to the top 30% of the class.

Well, in most of my EE courses, the grades were normalized around a B-. Therefore, roughly 12 percent of the class got As. Unfortunately, I didn't get up there very often. I'm one of those people who don't exist, with my *ahem* 2.85 GPA. Oh well...I have the degree...and I did make Deans list in the fall of my Junior year!

Jman

Just to add a piece of info to the mix, honors at Cornell is determined by each department (or maybe school if the departments are lazy). In ECE it's a a Junior Year Honors Seminary, Senior Year Honors Project, one one more Advanced ECE Elective (400 or higher) while maintaining a GPA around 3.5 or something. CS was pretty much the same when I checked out of curiousity a week or so ago.

I never said you don't exist... I suppose I should have qualified my statement by saying that I only actually met 3 people in the 4 years I was at Cornell

[Q]Just to add a piece of info to the mix, honors at Cornell is determined by each department (or maybe school if the departments are lazy). In ECE it's a a Junior Year Honors Seminary, [/Q]

Is it just me, or do the vows required at most seminaries seem unduly harsh for an honors program?

Sorry, couldn't resist, even though I'm sure it's just a typo.

Heh... SEMINAR!!

Hey, I'm tired and gotta get up at 4 am tomorrow for a trip outta town this weekend (no, not to New England - yes, that means I won't be hearing the games live :'( ), but you better believe I'll be checking up regularly).

Geez, first JTW with his "peak vs. peek", now this... I just can't catch a break

So to you all I bit a hardy...

A couple of additional data points: circa 1988 the "standard" intro Physics sequence (112-213-214), which most Engineers and some Physics majors take, was curved to a B-, while the "honors" series (116-217-218), taken by most Physics majors (especially those coming in with AP math) was curved to a B+. The idea was to prevent people from taking the "easier" class to get a better grade; the shifting of curves was supposed to represent a single scale on which a given student would get a comparable grade in either course.

Also, circa 1991 Astronomy and I'm pretty sure Physics did not require a thesis to get honors; it was based on grades in the major courses. I thought that was kind of a shame in retrospect, since most of my colleagues in grad school had written senior theses.

On google one day I found fairly recent (1996) statistics about the average GPA's for all of Cornell's undergraduate colleges and a sampling of the departments. Contrary to what many people think, the hotel school has the lowest gpa! I'm curious to find out what the biology gpa is, my guess would be somewhere in the high 2's.

Undergraduate GPA for Colleges
& Selected Departments

Colleges
Human Ecology 3.28
ILR 3.28
Arts & Sciences 3.15
AAP 3.14
ALS 3.12
Engineering 3.10
Hotel 3.07

.

Departments
Landscape Arch 3.54
Chinese 3.54
Rural Sociology 3.51
Classics 3.45
Textiles & Apparel 3.37
Education 3.33
Material Science 3.26
History 3.18
Computer Science 3.17
Art History 3.16
ARME 3.03
Economics 2.94
Chemistry 2.91
Mathematics 2.88
Physics 2.86

Source: [web.cornell.edu]

There is also an interesting discussion about Cornell grading, how they choose what to curve to, etc. on the page

[web.cornell.edu]

What, no music majors? I guess my graduating class of 5 wasn't statistically significant...

The more I think about this the less I am convinced that B+ A- was the center of the curve in the intro science courses. So I'm loosing my mind. If so, the center of the curve was likely C+ B-.

The fact that I can't remember of course is another argument for just how little all this stuff matters. And when I can't remember this, I feel old.

Wow, I guess now I can safely admit to having been an Econ major. Wonder why government (my other major) is not listed. It's the biggest major in the Arts College, IIRC.

My department of 1 wasn't statistically significant, either...

[Q]So to you all I bit a hardy...[/Q]

Er... don't you mean "bid a hearty"?

(And this from someone who actually got an F at Cornell. In his major.)

IIRC, you don't have to do a thesis in every college in order to graduate with honors. I know the honors requirements are different for each school. My roommate graduated magna cum laude without doing a thesis in the AG school. The Arts school, OTOH, I think requires that you do a thesis.,at least the English major does. Don't know about the others.

Yup, definitely B-/C+. Not including my lab grades, I hit the mean exactly on my three prelims for chem 207 and ended up with a B- for that part of the class. Trust me, I know many people who failed. But a lot of people drop the class after the F on the first prelim as well. Those tend to be the pre-med dropouts. It's a rough class.

I wish I'd known about liberal arts scholarships when I was at Cornell...

B.A., Independent Major, Playwriting, 1985.

Jason wrote:

Yup, definitely B-/C+. Not including my lab grades, I hit the mean exactly on my three prelims for chem 207 and ended up with a B- for that part of the class. Trust me, I know many people who failed. But a lot of people drop the class after the F on the first prelim as well. Those tend to be the pre-med dropouts. It's a rough class.

Yes. That's why I took 215. (No, seriously, I would have been miserable in Chem 207, but I took 215 as an elective, and had a good time. Of course I was a sophomore Physics major, so a freshman Chemistry class was pretty easy in comparison.)

Jason wrote:

The Arts school, OTOH, I think requires that you do a thesis.,at least the English major does. Don't know about the others.

As of 1991, Astronomy definitely did not.

Having McMurry as your chem professor isn't exactly going to make for a fun experience. When I took the chem 207 class in the fall of 2000 he droned so badly and just read his textbook word for word.

Some of his prelim questions were truly absurd.

"Imagine that we invent a new universe where instead of just two, there are three electrons in each orbital. What would happen ...."

Even the upper level classes ... and despite studying your butt off you can still get 'em.

pchem, inorganic chem, a bunch of the CS classes ... to name a few.

That reminds me of an anecdote from a friend of mine once when I was visiting Dartmouth. I noticed he had the McMurray organic chemistry textbook in his room and I exclaimed profusely with many words that would be inadmissable in said textbook about my feelings toward the Prof. He replied how I was so lucky that McMurray was actually my teacher and how all the orgo students there worship him because his book is so great. I was kind of surprised. I told him, yeah, his textbooks may be fantastic, but when he teaches straight out of them, not only does it provide no incentive to go to the 10:10 class, but in addition, it adds nothing to the class. I guess I just thought it was weird how much the Dartmouth chem students love the guy, and the Cornell chem students wish he would stay in his office and just write books.

Jason wrote:

IIRC, you don't have to do a thesis in every college in order to graduate with honors. I know the honors requirements are different for each school. My roommate graduated magna cum laude without doing a thesis in the AG school.

My understanding is that this is technically graduating "with distinction" *not* graduating "with honors". I could be wrong however...

I think that in the Ag school, you can graduate with both latin honors and "honors in research." The "with distinction" label is in Arts & Sciences (and maybe others- I'm not sure). Also, the latin honors (in Ag) are based only on your GPA from your final two years, so you don't have to worry about any freshman mistakes.

The book/lecture split is very common. Often it's exascerbated by the penchant for publishing houses to sign Known Names, and hence close-to-emeritus ancients, to slap their name on a book that is mostly a compendium of "will write for food" post-doc types. Whenever the scarlet "Ed." appears after a significant name's attribution, you can be pretty sure that's what is going on.

John, I love your sig quote. Every time I see the "drugs cause terrorism" scare ad I think an "S.U.V.s cause terrorism" ad would be far more accurate.

Greg wrote:

Every time I see the "drugs cause terrorism" scare ad I think an "S.U.V.s cause terrorism" ad would be far more accurate.

According to an op-ed piece in yesterday's Cape Cod Times, Arianna Huffington has already funded a series of TV ads with the latter message.

Greg wrote:

John, I love your sig quote. Every time I see the "drugs cause terrorism" scare ad I think an "S.U.V.s cause terrorism" ad would be far more accurate.

You mean like this? [www.detroitproject.com]

The short version is that Arianna Huffington made a suggestion that someone make an ad in her salon.com column (http://salon.com/news/col/huff/2002/10/22/oil/index.html ) maybe 3 or so months ago. People liked the idea so much they just started sending her checks. Soon the fund to make the ads was up to $200,000 and thus the ads came into being. The interesting part is that most (every?) major network affiliate is refusing to run them.

The 2nd part of the sig with the Lovins quote is my own doing. We need to recognize that our choices as consumers have real implications in terms of global security. The tree huggers can keep eating their granola for all I care; I believe fuel mileage is a national security issue first and an environmental one second.

Thing is, I don't even hate SUVs per se. I just hate the fact that Detroit doesn't even *try* to make them fuel efficient. How ironic is it that to really be a patriot and consume less gas, you need to buy a Japanese Hybrid or a German Turbodiesel? (Putting a drag inducing made in china plastic USA flag on your Excursion doesn't make you a fucking patriot.)

Personally, I just bought a Jetta TDI because it gets 49 mpg on the highway (42 city). With a very close Cornell ROTC friend currently stationed in Kuwait and a sister at RAF Lakenheath the UK, it seemed the very least I could do. I haven't yet, but this summer I also plan on running my stock unmodified car on a domestically produced, renewable fuel. ( [www.biodieselnow.com] ) In fact, if I have time on Saturday before the Harvard game, I'm planning on making a run to Burke Energy in Chelesa to get my 1st tank of B20 right at the pump. ( [www.burkeoil.com] )

So ask yourself what *you* can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?


(Just for the record, I'd support GWB drilling in ANWR *if* he also raised the fleet average fuel economy standards 10 mpg in the next 3 years. Hell, even if he just closed the damn SUV mileage loophole, I might consider it. [www.tnr.com] )

Edit: all links should work now. Age's automagic link-o-maker doesn't like the () I love to put around URLs.

Here is the fixed link to the article John posted. If you have a free 15 minutes, you should spend it reading this article.

No, I take that back. You need to make 15 minutes available to read this article.

[www.tnr.com]

Yeah, their drivers are definitely the most idiotic, self-centered, heinous bastards out there. They should make it a condition for Mah and Pah Stockbroker that upon purchasing one they must immediately move to a gated community -- where we have the keys.

Of all the many good things the PNW has done for the country, this is probably second only to grunge in being A Horrible Mistake That Is All Our Fault. It makes sense to have a pickup if you live on the slopes of Mt. Hood or Rainier, which you actually can and still have a nice upper-middle-class-veal-fattening-pen job out here, and all the trophy wives of the local Intelies and Nikites started pestering hubby for a "nice" (read: ludicrously expensive) one about 15 years ago when the McMansions started going up. Fast forward five years and they're driving them in downtown Portland. 'Nother five years and Detroit's billion dollar force feed, and it's downtown Boston. Yeah... that makes sense.

Hey Greg-

Any of these pumps work for you? [www.fuelwerks.com]

Seattle:
Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks: 912 NW 50th St. (206) 783-5728

Bellevue:
Chevron: 1607 145th PL SE (425) 641-1531 5AM-11PM

Olympia:
West bay Marine Services: 210 West bay Dr. (360) 943-2080 or (800) 884-2080 Mon-Sat 9AM-5PM

Port Townsend:
Middlepoint Biodiesel: (360) 385-1396

For everyone else, you can find a Biodiesel pump near you at:
[www.afdc.doe.gov]
or
[www.biodiesel.org]

Barring that - check out [forums.biodieselnow.com] to see if there are any bulk buying co-ops near you. I live 100 miles from the nearest commercial pump but have a co-op 7 miles away.

The great physicist P.A.M. Dirac wrote a classic text on quantum mechanics. I'm told that his class lectures consisted of his reading from that book. Students would complain now and then, but his response was that he had put years of effort into refining the exposition of the subject in the book. To give them anything else would be to give them a second rate product.

Was Paul Dirac the "look, ma, no particles" guy who won the Nobel for his 30 page masters' thesis from age 22, thus pissing off every physics boy wonder for the rest of eternity?

My favorite lecture stories are about Wittgenstein, who would continue the same line of extemporaneous thought, day after day, picking up at the same word, even though it was all off the cuff. He also did some time as a primary school teacher in rural Austria. His students didn't like him very much.