If I Put It Down, It Gets Extremely Complicated

I could have sworn I heard this rant somewhere in the halls of BLS during the last two weeks, but I think it's a Tom Wolfe original.

From pg. 558 of I Am Charlotte Simmons...

U.S. News & World Report--what a stupid joke! Here is this third-rate news weekly, aimed at businessmen who don't like to read, trying desperately to move up in the race but forever swallowing the dust of Time and Newsweek, and some character dreams up a circulation gimmick: Let's rank the colleges. Let's stir up a fuss. Pretty soon all of American higher education is jumping through hoops to meet the standards of the marketing department of a miserable, low-brow magazine out of Washington, D.C.! Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Dupont (the fictional college setting for the novel)--all jumped through the hoop at the crack of the U.S. News whip!

Does U.S. News rate you according to how many of the applicants you offer places to actually enroll in your college and not another? Then let's lock in as many as we can through early admissions contracts. Does U.S. News want to know your college's SAT average? We'll give it to them, but we will be "realistic" and not count "special cases"...such as athletes.
Tom Wolfe, you may be guilty of stealing Abraham Lincoln's all-white suit, but you, sir, have your finger on the pulse of the college rankings debate at the beginning of the 21st century.

If the Bible Is Right, The World Will Explode

Big news day in the law school universe as the yearly law school rankings from U.S. News & World Report were finally officially revealed. Overall, the mood is pretty somber (translation: peeved) at Baylor Law as the school's overall ranking fell 10 spots. On the brighter side, though, the school's trial advocacy program continued to rise in the rankings up to the #7 spot nationally.

#7 is great and all, but here's my question: If the professors here at Baylor Law freely acknowledge that P.C. is the pedagogical equivalent of waterboarding, what in the world are they doing at Stetson, the #1 school in this year's trial advocacy rankings?

(Redacted)[read: Stetson Law professors] used the waterboarding technique on (Redacted)[read: Stetson Law students] 183 times...
This just in, folks: Beginning in the fall of 2009, Baylor Law students will now have to go through P.C. 183 TIMES to fulfill their graduation requirements. Good luck, kiddos.