Bye, Berkley

Radio whiz calls it quits for last time

Berkley Fraser (a family friend) is retiring from the radio business (after a 50-year career) for at least the third time. He swears this one will stick.

Nice demographic sample from Samford University, the Baptist College where Berkley ended his career running the campus station:

Fraser wanted the students to help define the station. When he surveyed the student body, most of the female students wanted contemporary Christian music and most of the male students wanted hard rock or alternative.

They wound up with jazz… One of his accomplishments was getting the station on a higher tower with a stronger signal, so you can pick it up somewhere other than Lakeshore Drive.

Those poor CEOs!

Motions in Scrushy case call Sarbanes-Oxley Act unfair

We can’t have them being treated unfairly, now, can we? Scrushy wants the Act declared unconstitutional, and also wants a lot of his counts consolidated so they can’t charge him with lots of counts of doing the same thing even though he’s charged with doing the same things over and over.

Riley still shunned

Riley won’t lead his party’s delegation

Because a lot of party activists are still upset about the tax plan, Governor Riley won’t be part of the official delegation to the Republican Convention. Richard Shelby will lead it instead.

You can’t get rid of date memorization!

Students not made to learn key dates?

The conservative vision on public schools seems to be that (a) they suck, and (b) don’t you dare change anything! I cannot fathom why date memorization is supposed to be a big deal. (Full disclosure: BA [History], University of Alabama, ‘93.) You don’t need dates to put things in chronological context, you just need to know what happened before and what happened after.

What this is really about, of course — in addition to conservative attacks on any sort of multiculturalism in the social sciences — is the nature of “history” as a discipline. Conservatives are against the idea that students might study the actual causes and implications of historical events, much less the idea of different perspectives on what actually happened. Better that the students be told that “this happened in that year, then this happened in that year,” etc. Which is a big reason why people hate history.

Iraqi Civil War: We’re losing

CNN.com - Sources: Al-Sadr supporters take over Najaf - Apr 6, 2004

I don’t make any secret of the fact that I supported the Iraq War. A lot of my fellow pro-war liberals stopped supporting it during the runup because they thought that the Bush Administration would make a total hash of it. They were right, and I was wrong. I never imagined they’d screw things up the way they have.

Backing down from stupidity

Shula restores Croom award

Apparently, Alabama football coach Mike Shula didn’t think anyone would think that removing Mississippi State coach Sylvester Croom’s name from a spring practice award was a big deal. He thought wrong, and has been forced to backtrack. Thank God we’re a basketball school now.

Cheap sin tax

Cigarette tax plans may get panel OK

The plan calls for the state to raise taxes by 9 cents a pack on name-brand cancer sticks, but 40 cents on generics. Apparently, this is because the big death merchants are paying the state lots of money from the lawsuit settlement, while the small, mom-and-pop death merchants that sell generics aren’t.

War of the wingers

Bachus, Jauregui open campaigns

The incumbent and challenger in the 6th district are already battling over who’s more right-wing. “The ACLU has rated me at the bottom of their list for five years!” (Direct quote.) “I’m suing the ACLU!” “I supported Roy Moore!” “I work for Roy Moore!”