close-minded professors and open source software

My life has recently been consumed by all things graduate school...last fall it was applying and convincing four professors that 18 schools was not too many and that writing letters for a number of them on my behalf wouldn't be all that time consuming. The first part of Winter, from January 15 to February 1, was a brief respite from all the hubbub. However, the days since then have been even more dreadful than the entire process of filling out applications, printing statements and writing samples, and coordinating it all with professors.

This, my friends, is the season of decision notification. After gleefully reading an acceptance letter from the University of Wisconsin, I have systematically been humbled by some of the finer institutions of America. Part of me thinks there is a History Department Roundtable that convenes and decides to trick students into thinking they are worthy, only to follow up with a plethora of "sorry, but we just had so many applicants this year..." letters. Fortunately, two discoveries have given me a modicum of enjoyment during this apprehensive time: one close-minded professor and an unrelated bit of free software.

My wonderful political science professor, Rodney Grunes, makes our class read the New York Times everyday. I've been following the primary season using precisely that outlet, and in Tuesday's Op-Ed section I found an interesting piece. Apparently they had the neat idea of asking several different experts what questions they thought were being ignored in all the debate. Most of the respondents seemed thoughtful enough, but then I got to the questions of one Ruth Wedgwood, professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University. JHU is one of those schools that, unfortunately, will not be graced with my presence this coming fall, and reading the ridiculously hawkish, narrow-minded, stupid comments of Prof. Wedgwood took most of my rejection pain away. Her first, and, reason leads us to believe, most natural, question, was,

Senator Obama, as commander in chief an American president must understand the sense of honor that motivates his armed forces. Last September, MoveOn.org ran an advertisement in The Times that mocked Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, as "General Betray Us." You chose not to vote on the Senate resolution that condemned the advertisement. Would you still characterize the Senate vote as a "stunt" and "empty politics"?

The fact that this was apparently the most pressing issue on the mind of this well-paid professor at one of the more illustrious institutions of higher learning in our nation is disturbing. With the dire economic situation, millions of Americans without health care and facing home foreclosure, the entire international scientific community talking about environmental tiping points and a climate that is literally on the brink of destruction, Professor Wedgwood is primarily concerned that Senator Obama didn't step up to the plate and censure an organ of the American free press. Apparently honor means never allowing the people to utter a negative syllable about an individual with bars on his shoulder.

Wedgwood also takes a parting shot at Senator Clinton when she says

The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution bars any former president from election to a third term. Is it truly consistent with the spirit of the Constitution to have the same professional couple occupying the White House for 12 years? Isn't this all the more true when Bill Clinton promised that voters would receive, during his first term, "two for the price of one"?

Only finding such absurd and embarrasing comments has made me realize that I could never be happy at an institution that rewards such an obvious lack of scholarship, intelligence, and courtesy. I'm going to go out on a limb, temporarilly ignore my rule gainst generalizing, and possibly even display a tiny bit of animosity, and say that I doubt such statements would ever come from the lips, pen, or keyboard of any professor from any department at the more progressive, prestigious, and higher-ranked-by-US News & World Report University of Wisconsin-Madison, a beacon of learning that provides cultural, intellectual, and practical support to an entire state of cold, loving, Packers-cheering people.

The latter half of the title to this entry refers to my newfound interest in open source software, specifically the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. Some kind soul left an installation CD in the library, and I've since tested it out and fallen in love. It should be noted that I'm writing this blog after booting from the CD. I've decided that the first thing I buy with my next paycheck is going to be an external harddrive, partly so that I can backup my music and other files, partly so that I can install Ubuntu (or possibly Xubuntu) on my laptop. It's very exciting.

To close, I'll give you what Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom would look like if I was writing it this week: Microsoft goes down for not keeping up with the times, the NYT editorial board goes up for providing me with a laugh, Google goes up for making viable server-side solutions to propriety software, dedicated nerds all over the world go way up for slowly paving the way to a post-Microsoft world, the JHU board of trustees drops for hiring Beth Wedgwood, and every citizen of Wisconsin climbs to the top for never allowing such a tragedy to happen.