Beyond a call for impeachment

What does it say about you if you are selected to be the first sitting president ever to be shown being assassinated in a movie?

For a British TV Movie, a Real President Is Shot

By SARAH LYALL
Published: September 2, 2006
LONDON, Sept. 1 — The time is October 2007, and America is in anguish, rent by the war in Iraq and by a combustive restiveness at home. Leaving a hotel in Chicago after making a speech while a huge antiwar protest rages nearby, President Bush is suddenly struck down, killed by a sniper’s bullet.
That is the arresting beginning of “Death of a President,” a 90-minute film to be broadcast here in October on More4, a British digital television station. And while depicting the assassination of a sitting president is provocative in itself, this film is doubly so because it has been made to look like a documentary.

For the rest of the story, click here.

While it is pretty clear that many people do not admire our current President, I personally don't think anything good can come of this. I think it crosses the line.

Demoted

As if being named after the ruler of the dead in the icy wasteland of Hades was not diminution enough, scientists this past week reduced Pluto to the status of {gasp} a "dwarf" planet. I'm not sure how Pluto feels about this status reduction, but I'm certain that dwarves cannot feel at all pleased by the fact that this is the term chosen to suggest something "lesser than."

"According to the new rules a planet meet three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The latter measure knocks out Pluto and Xena, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt.
Dwarf planets only have to be round."

I forsee a rash of similar downgradings: "dwarf SUVs" to refer to things like RAV4s; "dwarf football teams" to refer to college football; "dwarf dogs" for those things Paris Hilton likes to carry around; "dwarf literature" for what used to be called "novelettes"; and perhaps "dwarf Presidents" for when one's ego and one's passionate supporters far exceed one's real capabilities or stature.

Cyborg

My apologies for being away so long, but the online version of the Introduction to Humanities course has taken up, and continues to take up, a fair amount of my technological time. Students in the online environment seem to be, so far, a needier group than those who attend classes. Of course, things aren't helped by the fact that they are provided virtually no information, and certainly no support, by our Office of Information Technology. We have no minimum requirements for their computers, no streamlined processes for getting them set up in the system, and they consistently tell the students "your instructor can help you with that," placing a further burden on us. We're responsible not only for designing, building, and filling the course with content, but also technical support. I now know why people say online teaching requires more time than in the classroom. Now...if I could only figure out how to turn this computer on.