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I would find a sentence or two that seems very specific to that book, and type that into google books to see if it can find out what the book is.
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The aftermath of the US Civil War had a profound impact on many. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the US Supreme Court Chief Justice, and Civil War veteran said "Certitude leads to violence". I feel like we are in an age of too much certitude.
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3 minutes ago, cjzimmer1 said:
As hard as it is for my brain to wrap around the idea of the US no longer being a superpower at some point I do believe it will end.
Why is this hard to believe? The Story of the World is about the rise and fall of one superpower after another. Every single one as fallen. Some last longer than others, but they all fall. I think advancing technology and communication hastens both the rise and the fall.
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Hoping that things get better for all y'all soon.
Shocking to think that before smoking bans were universal (are they?), many bars would have an AQI more than 300 on a regular basis.
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9 hours ago, Ktgrok said:
Yup! My backup plan was to contact the local fire department, but y'all are quicker 🙂
OMG, that could be the plot of your next book -- romance writer doing research for her next book contacts hunky firefighter for background info and ... 🙂
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Love the escapism this post has given me.
I might turn the question around though. I'm pretty sure there's something interesting to see in any city of any size in the United States, if only for a day or two. So, while I love going to art museums, seeing a bunch in a row might get tedious and repetitive. So, instead, I might think about the things my family might like to do on a trip: See Museums, go shopping, attend professional sports, fine or otherwise interesting dining, theater, visit historical sites, architecture, etc. Then, for each of these activities, find three of each that are on my way in the general direction I was going.
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Another good article about LU from the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-jerry-falwell-jr-a-reckoning-for-liberty-university-11599384600
This confirms what I has guessed earlier -- LU's board was completely hands-off. They only met twice a year, each for three hours. Several board members resigned years ago when they saw that they were given responsibility but no authority, and were replaced by those would be quiet.
I wonder how many other large institutions operate this way?
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Seems like this story isn't going to end any time soon --
The newly appointed, interim president had to tell Liberty employees to stop answering Jerry Fallwell's phone calls during work hours:
Also, his older son and his brother are still on the board, with the son holding the position of Vice President of University Support Services. This position "works directly with the COO and president to identify and execute opportunities for growth, improved productivity, and organizational effectiveness", which seems like a sinecure to me.
Furthermore, both of his sons, and both of their wives, are on still on the payroll of the University. I guess if your Dad founded the place, it is hard to think of it as anything but the family business.
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Why wouldn't they hang it from the monolith?
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2 hours ago, Where's Toto? said:
I think most of the "relationship" movies from before 2000 or so have a lot of problems with them. With some exceptions both ways - more recent ones with serious issues and older ones that are okay.
Totally agree with the above, and it goes way, way back. I love the poetry of Shakespeare's language, but some of his plots -- The Winter's Tale, Much Ado about Nothing, etc. -- what the heck?
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21 minutes ago, hjffkj said:
you can have backgrounds with zoom meetings so showing one's bedroom or any part of there house is unnecessary. So, are you saying that schools are not allowing kids to use backgrounds? Plus, one can easily set up a background that shows nothing of the room they are in.
I'm not sure that the low-end chromebooks that most student are given have enough oomph to do virtual backgrounds
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I'm a super private person, and I *hate* the forced intimacy that online schooling with mandatory web cameras is creating. There's nothing illegal going on in my bedroom, but I sure don't want to share images from my bedroom with arbitrary people. But that's what a lot of schools are forcing kids to do.
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On 8/28/2020 at 8:26 PM, fairfarmhand said:
“Liberty’s true social code, the one they don’t put in a forty-six-page manual, has everything to do with being a social and religious conservative and not a whole lot to do with acting in any traditionally virtuous way.“
Go on....
I assume there's one code for the students, which is enforced, and another for those in charge?
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On 8/30/2020 at 2:07 AM, Laura Corin said:
Could you put a fridge somewhere else?
Have you considered building a monolith in your front yard to house the fridge and icemaker?
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30 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:
in practice, there's often a limited, self-perpetuating pool of local, regional, or national mucky-mucks that gets picked over/recommended by all non-profits.
Thanks! I think this reinforces my feeling that frequently (not always, but frequently) boards just aren't structurally set up to provide a huge amount of oversight, or say "no". Consider that LU's board has many of the country's most prominent SBC pastors on it, many of whom run huge churches, sit on several other boards, and have all kinds of other commitments.
If you'll indulge me another question, how many hours is an outside board member expected to work per year on the organization's business, when the organization is a huge, billion dollar business? LU's board only met formally twice a year.
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1 hour ago, Sneezyone said:
Not a curric. but Management Cases by Drucker is a classic. Get an early version, not a new revised one. Also Greenleaf's Servant Leadership books: https://www.amazon.com/Servant-Leadership-Legitimate-Greatness-Anniversary/dp/0809105543/ref=sr_1_2?crid=ZVXKYY1NQOK1&dchild=1&keywords=servant+leadership+robert+greenleaf&qid=1598545977&s=books&sprefix=servant+lead%2Cstripbooks%2C256&sr=1-2. Public and non-profit leadership/management was my area of undergrad/graduate study. It's a perfect fit for an AP Gov class (which, frankly, tends to be kind of weak/easy). Even in MS discussions, I incorporate with DS the idea of leadership and we assess both what his idea of a good leader is (by looking at case studies and historical record) and whether current leaders possess those characteristics or the capacity to develop them.
Thanks for the recommendations, and I've got questions for you. Because I'm still going down this rabbit-hole, I learned that the LU articles of incorporation require that the board itself selects replacements for board members who leave for whatever reason. So, I guess there's no way to replace the whole board at once. While maybe this setup makes sense for the small neighborhood non-profit, how common is this for a multi-billion dollar operation, even a non-profit one?
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Oh, and thank you all for taking me down this interesting rabbit-hole. When I teach civics, I've only covered government (mainly federal, but some state and local too). I now realize that "civics" should also cover this kind of civic-engagement with private institutions as well. I don't suppose anyone has curriculum recommendations?
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54 minutes ago, mathnerd said:
My understanding is that LU is a not-for-profit educational institution....
If this is the culture that they were putting up with, then, the entire board and trustees should be replaced and there should be a probe into financial irregularities.I agree that the whole board of trustees should be replaced, so who should do the choosing of these new board members? I suspect when LU was founded as a small college, Jerry Fallwell Sr as the founder hand-selected the board (how else would you do it), but then that tradition just continued to this day.
My hypothetical question was -- "how should the board of trustees be chosen for such an organization"? For a corporation (public or private), the stockholders vote for the board. For small churches I'm familiar with, it is the vote of all the enrolled members. For public colleges, the state government picks the board. Is it crazy to suggest that the LU alumni vote for the board? I've never heard of this kind of governance.
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1 minute ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:
I apologize for not being more careful about reading your response and falsely assuming you were another Falwell apologist. Please forgive me. I was wrong.
No worries. Tone is hard to convey in text, and I'm frequently no good at it.
So here's an open question: How should the trustees of a place like LU be chosen? I believe that, de facto, board members were chosen by the Falwells.
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5 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:
t’s virtually impossible to prove board members are criminally culpable for a jury, that’s why they usually just end up paying fines. Odd fact about Enron: my husband’s ex’s husband, who we are friends with, was the main IT guy for Ken Lay and the others
Sometimes the world can be very small...
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7 minutes ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:
Frankly your response is like listening to an obnoxious teenager make excuses, " I shouldn't have got that ticket for speeding because there were other people on the road speeding faster than me who didn't get pulled over." No foolish teen, you deserve the speeding ticket and so do they. Just because they didn't get caught and punished doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you deserve to be caught and punished.
You are misreading me. I am not saying what should or should not happen from a moral perspective. I am saying it is highly unlikely that any LU board member will face legal consequences for what happened at LU. I am saying that boards of directors or trustees of very large organizations often don't have the oversight capabilities that we might like them to have, and vanishingly rarely face legal consequences for the misdeeds of the organizations they represent. Jerry Fallwell Jr's brother was on the LU board for his entire tenure, and no one thought that was a conflict of interest.
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7 minutes ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:
If they played a role in illegal business practices or illegal hiring and firing practices (retribution for those who did try to tell the truth and take corrective measures) there could be legal consequences, no?
I have no idea if LU did anything illegal, but if they did, surely it wasn't nearly to the level that Enron was, and none of their outside board members faced legal consequences.
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5 minutes ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:
That's not true. There are some churches and organizations that do distribute power to avoid exactly this. LU's board shouldn't get off the hook for this like hapless victims of a villain. They appear to have been grossly negligent in dealing with this because it appears, based on various interviews they were aware of issues for many years. Now it is possible there are people who stood up and clearly addressed it as much as they had power to do, and if that's the case we need to hear about them and how they were treated by the board and Falwell as a result.
I suspect the power of the board is greater, the smaller and less powerful the organization is. I *guarantee* you that the LU board will get off the hook for this. And really, my point is, what are they on the hook for? How could they be punished? Removed from their board positions? Fine, but that's a part time job at best. And how do you think you get to be a trustee of LU?
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2 hours ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:
If anyone sees any reports about the board or other forms of leadership at LU and if they're going to be held accountable for letting all of this go on without any attempts to reign it in, please post. That's what boards are for, right? As checks and balance systems. Or maybe some did everything in their power and paid the price. We should hear about them too.
Maybe this is a spinoff thread, but I feel like boards in general, not just in this case, but in the corporate world too, rarely perform much in terms of checks and balances, and aren't really set up to do so. In civics, we teach the strength of having three branches of government, each of which can check the others, but you don't see this ever in the corporate world.
All boards that I know of are very part time -- they meet maybe once a month, often quarterly, and most of the members have full time jobs (and full time commitments) to other organizations. They hire the CEO, and that's about it. So, the boards don't really have much time or effort to do much checking and balancing, nor do they have much incentive to do so. Most of the information given to the board comes through the CEO, so they can't really do any independent checking.
How left turns work (?)
in The Chat Board
Posted
Something my Dad taught me, which has always stuck with me, is that no one actually has the absolute "right of way" when driving. There are all kinds of rules about who needs to yield the right of way, but that doesn't mean that you should plow your car into someone if can be avoided, even if they made a mistake. I assume this is true in all states, but who knows.
I think your case may be particularly tricky if the E-W road is a divided highway, or if it is otherwise wide enough that it is hard to see when the Southbound car arrived from a Northbound car or vice versa.
However, I would say that if I arrived heading northbound on the southern part of this intersection, and I needed to make a right turn, and there was no eastbound traffic, so I could do so safely, I would not wait for a Southbound car, if it seemed that there was a huge line of Westbound traffic blocking their ability to turn.