Robert Gates, the new President of Texas A&M, has narrowed the scope of former president Bowen's "Vision 2020." Apparently there were 12 goals in Vision 2020 and Gates narrowed it down to a manageable 4. The main push of Vision 2020 was apparently to make Texas A&M just like every other state university in the nation. You can imagine how popular this was with Aggies. I was at an Aggie baseball game last year when Bowen threw out the first pitch amidst deafening boos and not a few angry shouts. They grew to a fever pitch when the announcer mentioned Vision 2020, but turned to adulation with the mention of Bowen's imminent retirement. What a way to go, huh? Here's a taste:

It’s been 3 1/2 years since then-President Ray Bowen unveiled Vision 2020, the first long-range planning document to come out of A&M in two decades. The aim was to have the university ranked in the top 10 among public universities by the year 2020.

Yet last year, A&M dropped out of the best 50 universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. In a recent interview, Gates put much of the blame for the slip on shrinking faculty.

Gates said the shrinkage developed as professors retired and, in an attempt to shave costs, the university replaced them with lower-paid lecturers or no one at all.

He said professors also must be paid more — particularly full professors, who make an average of $10,000 less than their University of Texas counterparts.

Hunh. Did you forget something, Bowen? Also, more talk on diversity, which no university president anywhere can spend less than 20% of his thoughts on.

Teachers in Comal County are ticked about fire inspections. Interestingly enough, the amount of stuff they put on their walls is against the fire code.

The rule states that no more than 20 percent of a classroom's walls may be covered with artwork and teaching materials.

At least some of the state inspectors, who are inspecting all the Comal School District buildings, have told administrators that dry erase boards, filing cabinets and furniture pushed against walls count toward that 20 percent limit.

It's funny, I'm laughing. Where's the TEA?

That SA city councilman, David A. Garcia, resigned before the vote that would have ousted him. That's good--I obviously expected much much nastier. Rick Casey sums it a whole lot better than I do.

Garcia had to know more damaging evidence would likely come out as council members questioned First Assistant District Attorney Mike Bernard — who would be determined to let it be known that DA Susan Reed's office doesn't prosecute people for bookkeeping errors.

I say kudos to the DA's office. I hope the Senate was watching.

Report on ZDNet concerning some Aberdeen report that says that Linux and Unix as risky as Windows There's a link to the CERT report. This isn't going to convince anybody, of course. It would be an understatement to say I "lean heavily" to Microsoft. I respect the hell out of the various *nixes, even the one running under Apple's OS X, but my job doesn't depend on those. Maybe more on the report later, but probably not.

Sigh. One of the San Antonio city councilmen that got nabbed in a federal bribery scandal isn't going to resign. I think this fellow's the third councilman, along with some Alamo Community "College" District board members and some contractors, that was involved in this. Oddly for San Antonio D.A. Susan Reed isn't going to let him get away with the various prevarications that go along with this sort of thing.

I'm watching the table close so I can see when the Race card is thrown.

UPDATE: It's a matter of days, maybe hours now.

K-Mart is leaving Texas. Maybe I should go into one before I never have the opportunity again. Now I guess lots of ex-K-Marts can be shopping center anchors that drag down check-cashing places, Fox Photos, and regional offices of City Public Service.

John le Carré, thank you for helping shift the wacko conspiratorialist black-helicopter stereotype from the far right to the far left. This column reminds me of the time the Trilateral Commission used the Knights Templars' holy-water-powered time scoop to drop sleeping pills made from a long-lost Atlantean formula into a beer that I was going to drink while it was still in the factory. I slept through a crucial Congressional Politics class the next day in which I was going to reveal the secret of campaign finance reform and its use by Big Oil Companies and the Polish Mafia to threaten heretical Mennonites that had created a genetically engineered hay that made horses as fast as golf carts. But no... it's the United States That Has Gone Mad.

Kofi Annan says that AIDS is a worse threat to life than (an? the?) Iraq war.

More people will die this year of AIDS than even in a war in Iraq, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday, trying to put a more balanced perspective on the attention riveted on Iraq while dire global health problems go unattended.

...

Annan: ``But the challenge now is for all Zimbabweans to work together and with each other, and with the international community, to find solutions before it its too late.''

I'm not clear on this... invade Zimbabwe too? I mean, Mr. Mugabe's real busy with his Lenin-style not-quite-by-accident-famine so making AIDS not be in Zimbabwe, well that's just a lot of work on top of seizing farms and handing them out to cronies so the farms stop growing that pesky old food. Should we really bother Mugabe with this? Mr. Annan?

He said Africa is undermined by poverty, which condemns mothers and children to premature death. Other children go to bed hungry and without access to clean drinking water, he said.

Ohhh... I guess, yeah, poverty and hunger are just things that just happen without any help from the government. Say, isn't Zimbabwe a net food exporter? Is food really a problem? Let me check my records. Here we are: Apparently my facts are out of date because Zimbabwe WAS a net food exporter because of all the good soil and farms and such but some of the people on these farms were filthy white people! Western interlopers no doubt, and I'm sure they were Enemies of the Regime or something similar. Glad we got rid of them! They weren't worth a damn! All they did was sit around on their farms and grow food for people to eat!

Still, Kofi, before we invade we'd like the UN to give us a little bit of guidance here. When the 4 days are up and Mugabe's ours for the taking, with his cronies and his government torn to shreds by precision munitions, do you want the old medieval head-on-a-plate delivery to signify the end of his regime or did you want to arrange for an endowed chair at an Ivy League school? No, now, come on... he's not going to some foo-foo European university to rail against capitalism and America and filthy white people. He's got Ivy League (or UC system) written all over him.

Anyhow, we'll pencil this invasion in after Iraq, and just try to split the total casualties down the middle. But for the record, you're asking a lot.

Orson Scott Card (via Instapundit) explains why we won't invade North Korea. I make careful use of the word explains--it's really more of a study in international diplomacy than a "why we won't" piece. Ender Wiggin couldn't have explained stuff like this better.

Apparently War Is Not The Answer. Well of course it isn't, silly! Everybody knows The Answer is 42. Or is it 42?

Some of the usual good stuff from Jack Dunphy on Illinois' outgoing Gov. Ryan and his blanket commutations of death sentences. For those of you that wonder why Texas' governor is restricted in his/her pardon privileges, this is why. Just for a change it'd be nice to see a lefty just considering that justice had been done by a judge, district attourney, police, 12 men and women, and various other appellate types when they said "You know what? This fellow's got to die." But no, the sentence itself is unjust because. Here's a tip for those of you running for governor, President, any other executive office: sometimes people will die while you hold this office, and you could have prevented it. Sometimes they'll die because you tell them to do something. Now, try weighing the number people you know are going to die (we'll call them "condemned"), but deserve this beyond a shadow of a doubt--let's say it's a matter of public record--against the number people that won't necessarily die because some of the first group ceased to be. You don't know how many--could be none, could be 7, could be 100. But chances are it'll be More, and that's in addition to the people that have already died at the hands of the condemned. It sucks, but it simply Is. Humanity is sorta condemned to not knowing the minds of other men or the path of the future. There are all kinds of systems in place to take some of the guesswork out, but when it comes down to it 99.999% sure is still not 100%. Best to support the system that leaves you with the 99.999% than create a personal system that can't be quantified or audited or subject to scrutiny because it exists only in the framework of a leader's whims.

From Drudge (if you don't know the address I'm not going to help you) Time's Anxiety Meter gives us a good gauge of what the Near But Still Plenty Silly Left is worried about. The whole North Korea thing is "Severe," with the implication that we aren't going to be able to deal with Iraq with NK sticking their chests out at us (natch). Come on, Time--if the White House had said North Korea was a problem ahead of Iraq, you'd be screaming RED BAITERS before Ari Fleischer could even say "Now Helen..." There's other stuff in there, none of it interesting since it's Time. Read it or don't--I think the only way Time actually delivers news is by hyping their X of the Year pick. Now that's journalism!