Best line indicating need for what is asked

“You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?”

Message sent to The Shadow Scholar as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Shadow Scholar writes college papers for other people.

I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

Fascinating article. He claims he will make $66,000 this year.

Best line to start the day

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953 quoted by Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

Best scientific study line of the day

In addition to making you groggy and dazed, jet lag may make you stupid. A study presented November 15 at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting finds that hamsters suffering extreme, chronic jet lag had about half the normal rate of new neuron birth in a part of the brain. What’s more, these animals showed deficits in learning and memory.

Wired Science

I didn’t even know the little buggers flew that often. I wonder if they get frequent flyer miles.

A-hole alert

Representative-elect Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican and anesthesiologist, beat his incumbent Democratic opponent by campaigning against the terror of universal socialized medicine. Despite the fact that his opponent voted against healthcare reform, Harris insisted that once elected he would vote to repeal healthcare reform. Now he is elected! And he was shocked to learn that his free, taxpayer-funded, government-run healthcare won’t kick in until 28 days after he’s sworn in. This made him upset!

Read more from the War Room at Salon.com

Just for the record, Federal employee health insurance isn’t “free.” I for example, pay about $175 a month just for myself. And that doesn’t include any dental or vision insurance. I pay 100% for those coverages, which are relatively new. Not complaining mind you, just clarifying.

November 16th ought to be a national holiday

W. C. Handy was born on this date in 1873, the son of former slaves.

I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down,
I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down,
‘Cause my baby has left this town.

If I’m feelin’ tomorrow, just like I feel today,
If I’m feelin’ tomorrow, like I feel today,
I’ll pack my trunk and make my get-away.

St. Louis woman, with all her diamond rings,
Stole that man of mine, by her apron strings;
If it wasn’t for powder, and her store-bought hair,
That man I love wouldn’t’ve gone nowhere!
Nowhere!

W.C. Handy is widely recognized by his self-proclaimed moniker, “Father of the Blues” due to his steadfast and pioneering efforts to document, write and publish blues music and his life-long support of the genre. Although much of his musical taste leaned toward a more sophisticated and polished sound, Handy was among the first to recognize the value of the blues, and Southern black music in general, as an important American legacy. Handy was an accomplished bandleader and songwriter who performed throughout the South before continuing his career in New York. He came across the Delta blues in the late 1890s, and his composition “Memphis Blues,” published in 1912, was the first to include “blues” in the title. Some historians don’t consider “Memphis Blues” to be an actual blues song, however it did influence the creation of other blues tunes, including the historic “Crazy Blues,” which is commonly known as the first blues song to ever be recorded (by Mamie Smith in 1920). A Memphis park was named after Handy in recognition of his contribution to blues and the Blues Foundation recognizes the genre’s achievements annually with the prestigious W.C. Handy award.

The Blues | PBS

NPR told the Handy and St. Louis Blues stories as part of the NPR 100. Click to hear the NPR report, which includes Handy’s own reminiscences and the complete 1925 recording of the song by Bessie Smith accompanied by Louis Armstrong, possibly the most influential recording in American music history. (RealPlayer file. Note: The free media player VLC will play this file.)

Or you could spend 99¢ and buy the track from iTunes. This recording makes my desert island list every time.

It’s also the birthday of Maggie Gyllenhaal (33), Lisa Bonet (43), and Diana Krall (46).

Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago was born on this date in 1922. He died in June.

Burgess Meredith was born 103 years ago today. Meredith was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar — at the age of 68 and 69 — The Day of the Locust and Rocky.

Oklahoma became a state, the 46th, on November 16, 1907.

Today’s Photo

I own all the Beatles studio tracks on CD, so the announcement today that the iTunes Store has The Beatles is of little consequence to me. But, at least at this writing, I love the photo at Apple.com.

You can buy the thirteen albums and the two Past Masters albums and more as a box set from iTunes for $149.

Of course, you can get the The Beatles Stereo Box Set in real CDs for $129.99 from Amazon.

The Santa Fe Trail

. . . was opened on this date in 1821.

William Becknell, under forced escort by Mexican troops, arrives at Santa Fe. New Mexicans, who are still celebrating their newly won independence from Spain, quickly purchase all of his goods, which he initially intended to trade with the Indians. This marked the birth of the Santa Fe Trail, originating from Independence, Mo.

New Mexico Magazine

The 1940 film Santa Fe Trail, with Ronald Reagan playing George Armstrong Custer — and starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland — has little basis in historical fact other than that there was a Santa Fe Trail.

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument (New Mexico)

… was proclaimed a national monument 103 years ago today by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Gila Cliff Dwellings

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived in the Gila Wilderness from the 1280s through the early 1300s. The surroundings probably look today very much like they did when the cliff dwellings were inhabited.

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Who Let the Dogs Out?

Michael Vick threw for 333 yards and four TDs and ran for 80 yards and two more scores as the Eagles beat the Redskins 59-28 Monday night. It was 35-0 nine seconds into the second quarter.

And for you fantasy football fans, in my league Vick had a 61.1 point night.

Young and Dilfer also used the word artistry, and those who watched the game will understand. Vick had the athleticism and grace of a Michael Jordan or a  Roger Federer, part sport and part dance — one of the reasons we set aside time in our lives to watch these games.

The Fifth Down

“[It was as if Vick were playing a video game Monday night, controlling the defenders, making them run in slow motion as he blew past them for big gains and touchdowns.” Ashley Fox, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Wandering Mind Is a Sign of Unhappiness

John Tierney reports that the Wandering Mind Is a Sign of Unhappiness and that concentration seems to make us happier. An interesting article that includes this finding:

Using an iPhone app called trackyourhappiness, psychologists at Harvard contacted people around the world at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were doing and what they were thinking.

The least surprising finding, based on a quarter-million responses from more than 2,200 people, was that the happiest people in the world were the ones in the midst of enjoying sex. Or at least they were enjoying it until the iPhone interrupted.

The researchers are not sure how many of them stopped to pick up the phone and how many waited until afterward to respond. Nor, unfortunately, is there any way to gauge what thoughts — happy, unhappy, murderous — went through their partners’ minds when they tried to resume.

I didn’t mean

. . . to sell Taibbi’s style short in my previous post. It’s there in Griftopia.

“The basic scan in the Internet age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out fiftieth-story windows, and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.”

Best line of the day

“We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it—who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum.”

Matt Taibbi in Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Taibbi’s latest book is very informative—eye-opening—though not written in his usual over-the-top, profane style. Or at least, written in a tamer version of it. If you’re interested in what is going on in our economy and how little politics matters, I recommend the book. The chapter on commodities futures, from which the above quotation is taken, is worth the price of the book by itself.

Did you know BTW, that all the parking meters in Chicago are owned by a consortium that includes the United Arab Emirates? Or that so are parking meters in Nashville, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and other cities? Or that Pennsylvania Governor Rendell tried to sell the Pennsylvania Turnpike?

When you’re trying to sell a highway that was once considered one of your nation’s great engineering marvels—532 miles of hard-built road that required tons of dynamite, wood, and steel and the labor of thousands to bore seven mighty tunnels through the Allegheny Mountains—when you’re offering that up to petro-despots just so you can keep the lights on in the state house into the next fiscal year, you’ve entered a new stage in your societal development.

Best Plagiarized Lines from Bush’s Book

“After it emerged that entire sections of George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points were plagiarized from books by former aides, The Borowitz Report asked our followers on Twitter to come up with the best plagiarized first line for the book. After a several hours of crowdsourcing, here are the results (and thanks to the thousands of people who contributed):”

Follow this link to read the Best Plagiarized Lines from Bush’s Book from the Borowitz Report.

November 15th

Red Canna, Georgia O’Keefe, 1923Georgia O’Keefe was born on November 15th in 1887.

[O’Keefe] was an unknown 29-year-old art teacher when a series of her charcoal drawings wound up in the hands of the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz, and he put the drawings in his art gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York City without even asking her. At first, she was angry that her work had been exhibited without her permission, but the drawings made her famous, the first American woman to be taken seriously by the art world.

She eventually met Stieglitz; they hit it off and got married. O’Keeffe eventually became even more famous for her paintings of flowers, but when asked why she chose flowers as her subject, she said, “Because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is in Santa Fe. American Masters has a brief biography.

Judge Wapner is 91 today. Raymond Babbitt sends his greetings.

Ed Asner, who will always be Lou Grant to me, is 81. We saw Asner in a one-man performance as FDR earlier this year.

Petula Clark will be headed downtown to celebrate her 78th birthday.

When you’re alone
And life is making you lonely
You can always go
Downtown

Sam Waterston is 70.

Our guv for a few more weeks, Bill Richardson, is 63 today.

Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), Field Marshal Edwin Rommel (1891-1944), Governor (of New York) Averell Harriman (1891-1986), and U.S. Air Force General (and George Wallace running-mate) Curtis LeMay (1906-1990) were all born on this date.