Incentivize Big Dance to Improve Academics

This article was originally published by Technorati on 17 March 2010.

Toward a more enlightened approach to college basketball . . .

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reportedly wants to ban teams from the NCAA men's basketball tournament for poor academic performance, according to ABC News. While Duncan doesn't feel he can compel schools to comply with this idea, he intends to urge them to do so.

The move, should it be applied to this year's Big Dance, would rule out number 1 seed University of Kentucky (my alma mater), the University of Louisville (from my home state; what a proud moment for me) and the University of Tennessee (probably tainted by its long border with my home state) and at least nine other teams, based on low graduation rates alone.

If the Obama administration were serious about this initiative (which it isn't), surely the Department of Education could come up with a (dis)incentive package that would turn the heads of university presidents.

Allow me to suggest a few options. First, why not name an Academic Champion of the NCAA tournament? Give the school with the highest graduation rate/average GPA to reach the tournament a banner, a trophy and a cash prize.

Conscious Backgammon

Our good friend Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose,tells us:"A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego when it happens without attempting to restore it." (p.215)

This spiritual practice I force upon myself almost everyday (as if driving in Naples isn't enough to diminish my ego).

I start off every writing day playing backgammon against my computer. Computers are generally good at what they do and most games I take a drubbing, and that's painful to what's left of my ego.

Eckhart also tells us that enlightened doing is not attached to outcomes, and I would like to be in a position to tell you that I see each game through to the end, win or lose, and that I concede graciously when a point of inevitability is reached. But generally, the truth is, I shut down the game and start up a new one and keep doing this until I finally win. Hey, what can I tell you? That's my writing process.

But here's the thing, I'm pretty sure the computer cheats. Let's look at the facts.

Put Being Before Doing in Job Search

A version of this article was originally published by Technorati on 30 March 2010.

According to Yahoo! hotjobs, nine occupations are still hiring, even in this recessionary period: Truck Mechanic, Physical Therapist, Special Ed. Teachers, Environmental Engineers, Healthcare, Nursing, Finance and Banking, Veterinary Techs, and Wind Energy Techs.

Investipedia.com's Bobbi Dempsey, the article's author, took her data from a wide variety of sources--including a couple of job search engines (Monster.com and Simply Hired), a nursing college, and an interview with Jeff Cohen, author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Recession-Proof Careers--to give people valuable leads in the search for their next job.

Now, juxtapose this bright, helpful information with a recent very gloomy forecast (also posted on Yahoo!, by the way) from Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI). Of the current employment picture, Achuthan says, "Forty percent of the unemployed are long-term unemployed. They've been unemployed for six months or longer."

These jobs, Achuthan says, are either "associated with the bubble that burst" or are in manufacturing. "So, those people are displaced. The recovery is happening. It’s very real, but the economy doesn’t want their skills for one reason or another."

According to Achuthan, they are permanently unemployable. He predicts a resultant elevated rate of unemployment for the foreseeable future. "[Unemployment] was down around four or five percent," he says. "Forget that! Forget it!"