College Grades?

Grade Inflation - is an A really an A anymore? What's your opinion? Read an essay by Michael Berube, a Professor of Literature at Penn State.

Culture
Christian Pop Culture here to stay? Looks like it. Religious-themed T-shirts, posters for Christian rock concerts, signs promoting traveling evangelists and billboards preaching sexual abstinence don't just dot the landscape; they are the landscape, especially in the smaller towns and cities. Christian pop culture seems, at times, to be all the pop culture such underdog places have, at least in any local, grass-roots sense. Big TV, big music and big film, by clustering in the nation's glitziest ZIP codes and focusing -- almost exclusively, at times -- on the lives and loves of affluent young singles, have left vast swaths of the country to the preacher-folk, who've seized the day by slicking up their acts. It's no wonder that some are now ready for prime time. .... The flame is an old one; only the fuel is new. And there's still plenty of it. Expect it to burn on.

War
Riding into Falluja - take a short ride with the Marines and get a taste of another hell hole. Think this is about the time I'd be asking for a city desk beat.

Always liked to learn the meaning behind certain expressions, so thought I'd occasionally include an Expression of the Day.

Expression of the Day
Dead as a Doornail Also, dead as a dodo or herring. Totally or assuredly dead; also finished. For example, The cop announced that the body in the dumpster was dead as a doornail, or The radicalism she professed in her adolescence is now dead as a dodo, or The Equal Rights Amendment appears to be dead as a herring. The first, oldest, and most common of these similes, all of which can be applied literally to persons or, more often today, to issues, involves doornail, dating from about 1350. Its meaning is disputed but most likely it referred to the costly metal nails hammered into the outer doors of the wealthy (most people used the much cheaper wooden pegs), which were clinched on the inside of the door and therefore were “dead,” that is, could not be used again. Dead as a herring dates from the 16th century and no doubt alludes to the bad smell this dead fish gives off, making its death quite obvious. Dead as a dodo, referring to the extinct bird, dates from the early 1900s.

Quote of the Day
"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion."
Abraham Lincoln