WanderingAmylessly 2.0

(And let's just hope this woman doesn't have a gun.) (AP) -- Marilee Jones, a prominent crusader against the pressure on students to build their resumes for elite colleges, resigned Thursday as dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after acknowledging she had misrepresented her own academic credentials. Jones has been a popular speaker on the college admissions circuit, where she urged parents not to press their kids too hard, and told students there are more important things than getting into the most prestigious colleges. She rewrote MIT's application, trying to get students to reveal more about their personalities and passions, and de-emphasizing lists of their accomplishments. But Jones, dean since 1997, issued a statement saying she had misrepresented her credentials when she first came to work at MIT 28 years ago and "did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since." MIT spokeswom...

My husband just alerted me to a bit of breaking news. A "suspicious" man in a ski mask with a "bulge" in the front of his sweater led police to lock down Macbride Hall today - the second time this week that police have closed buildings on campus due to a potential threat. Officers at the Pentacrest cleared out Macbride at 12:32 p.m. During the evacuation, police located the person, who authorities said was an unarmed UI student. Um, let's see. It's a particularly cold and wet day in Iowa. Someone's wearing bulky clothes and a head covering. This is troubling, why, exactly? It might be a LOOOOONG fall and winter ahead. Maybe the knee-jerk freakouts will calm a bit during the summer break. I don't know though. The first lockdown earlier this week involved a bomb threat to the health sciences library, yet the administration building on the other side of campus was also locked down. "Just in case," they said. I don't see the connection. The...

"So how's Henry?" That's a question I get a lot. Usually the question is followed by, "You know, how's his, um, potty training going?" I'm so glad that I've made not only myself, but everyone around me, obsessed with my child's pooping progress (or lack therof). When last I wrote about his toilet travails, I believe we were becoming resigned with the notion that he'd be in kindergarten in a pull-up, because nothing was working. We ended up taking him to doctors and psychologists, poking him and prodding him and asking him about his feelings, and once resorting to an enema to get things back in working order. Finally, we put him on a medication that makes it virtually physically impossible to hold it in. And now we spend a lot of time sitting in the bathroom. But he seems to be doing much better, or was until two days ago when started wetting his pants. Why why why why why. When we just get one thing figured out, something else rears its u...

I love Rosie O'Donnell. I love that she's loud. I love that she's a lesbian. I love that she hates Bill O'Reilly (and a whole long list of other brainless twits including Donald Trump...and I'll forgive her for liking Tom Cruise because we all have moments of weakness). I just think she's awesome. Apparently so do lots of other women, because viewership of that estrogen-fest ABC show The View is up something like 15 percent since she came on board a year ago. But she's leaving. She says it's because contract negotiations with ABC failed. I think it's because Barbara Walters is a two-faced, ass-kissing suckup. Walters has been trying to distance herself from Rosie since day one. She brought Rosie in to boost the ratings, but at every turn she avoids showing any sort of support for Rosie. When Rosie and Trump got in a verbal fist fight, Walters was quite slow to come to her star co-host's defense. And then there's the most recent to-do, when O...

Now. Right now. For all three of you out there who've nagged me about it during the past week... I am blogging again. Right now. I could make a zillion excuses why I haven't been blogging. I'll just list one. I'm a complete slug. I'd rather sit around watching repeats of Dancing with the Stars than spout my soapbox schtick here. Plus, I've felt a little hopeless about humankind lately. Every time I start thinking about Bush and what a mess he's made, I want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Then there's the Virginia Tech killings -- what else is there to say beyond tragic, senseless and evil. There's blogblogblog. And then there's blahgblahgblahg. I worried that I had drifted to the latter. It's very nice to know that a few of you out there might actually enjoy reading my rantings. Then there's "Alex" the spammer who is kind enough to leave a comment every so often. Anyway, I did it. I blogged. Leave you utter...