This one at least had most of the letters in mostly the right order, if left to right. When I got to the 11th floor and looked at the elevator door, well, see for yourself.

 

Sometime in the last five years someone decided that cleaning staff should close the drain stopper in sinks and tubs, presumably to indicate that they had, in fact, interacted with the bathroom enough to push the drains closed. Ridiculous. All this means is that when I first brush my teeth the sink fills up before I realize I need to unplug it. I start running the shower and step into ankle deep water and have to bend over and unplug it… Yes, I am whining.

More substantially, I would like to complain on behalf of those of us vertically challenged. The middle of my back is always well within the range of the shower head, but more often than not I have to contort myself to wash my hair. Why not simply makes the shower head suitable for tall people? There is no (or marginal) cost to doing so and it would not adversely effect those below 6 feet tall. Please consider this simple gesture?

By the way, otherwise the Blackwell Hotel at Ohio State University is outstanding. A really beautiful and well maintained environment.

 

From our class trip to DC. We heard about the limitations of national intelligence and the fact that the IC is to present information not propose policy or action.

Location:K St NW,Washington,United States

 

One more flight today. 6 flights in 3 days. @ San Diego International Airport (SAN) http://instagr.am/p/JzYUp/

Mine! Mine! @ Edgewater Grill http://instagr.am/p/Jy9rY/

BMW: CHiPs has moved up in the world. @ Starbucks (Piazza Carmel) http://instagr.am/p/JyybW/

Bird @ Starbucks Coffee (La Costa) http://instagr.am/p/JyMW6/

Drinking coffee in CA can cause cancer. Who knew? @ Starbucks Coffee (La Costa) http://instagr.am/p/JyFuL/

Waiting in the LV airport…with Lion King music, you know that haaaaiiii lahaaiii bit, on loop. Very annoying. Very.

Location:Valley Centre Dr,San Diego,United States

 

Some of the things that work so well are the special keys: brightness, volume, iPod player control (play/pause, forward, back), and the eject button reveals/hides the onscreen keyboard. Basic key commands work, like copy and paste and the tab key takes you between input fields. But there is definitely room for improvement. There are a number of things that I think should “just work” but are AWOL.¹

• CMD-Tab – This should switch between apps, just as in the MacOS.
• Arrow keys to select menu items – Once you starting typing into, say, the Google search field or an email address field you have to touch the screen to select the option you want. I should be able to use the arrow keys to select it.
• Mail – The basic Mail key commands should be supported: Reply, Reply All, Delete, etc.

I am sure I will think of some more, especially app specific commands (the Photos app could benefit from delete, for example). Do you have any to add?

 

1. BTW these are also reasons why a touch screen iMac, for example, wouldn’t work yet. Too often you would have to go up to the screen to perform an action.

Location:St Charles Ave,New Orleans,United States

 

Wonderful Hindbeernkuchen I had for lunch when I arrived. O! So good!

The last time I was in Germany, other than in an airport flying through, was in 1988. I had taken a year off from college between my freshman and sophomore years and attended a Goethe Institut in Schwäbisch Hall, not terribly far from Freiburg. One of my great regrets is that I have never become fully fluent in German and it has been too long. I was surprised, however, at how much I did remember. Could understand most conversations and most that I read (reading the academic articles have helped in that regard) but when I came to formulate a responses, my vocabulary was lacking.

These two days have been, as I said, incredibly busy, but also very draining in an energetic way. In order to be useful in my consultation I had to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible about the current German system of higher education since the Bologna Process, particularly at Freiburg, and as much again about the system before Bologna. The structure is quite different. Like Oxford they have Faculties rather than colleges and students enroll directly into a program of study, there are no “general education” courses and little in the way of what we would call electives. Their course of study is three years long but all (if one is going to have anything like a management position) are expected to do a two year masters program following.

What is happening across Europe is now a desire to return to a liberal arts style of curriculum, something that we take for granted at Penn State. The Netherlands have led the way with a number of universities now having “Univeristy Colleges” that are four year programs designed to expose students to truly interdisciplinary approaches to thought and research. One aspect that I found surprising is that almost all of these programs are taught excessively in English.

One overwhelming feeling I have after my time is one of gratitude. We are very fortunate to have such a strong educational program at Penn State that places an emphasis upon literacy, numeracy, and global perspective. And we are able to do this, by and large, for all students, even those in fields that require very directed programs of study such as engineering. We are not perfect by any measure and I am encouraged to continue to develop our own programs at Penn State so that they are not just for the benefit of our PLA and SHC students.

The train that begins my journey home. Where’s Waldo?

Location:A train, somewhere in Germany

 

As the day warmed up the weather cleared leaving the sky crystal clear. I headed over to Mansfield College at 10 am to begin a day full of activity. Scholar and PLA student Kaitlyn Randol met me at their student accommodations and showed me around. Why? Because…

We are developing a new study abroad opportunity for our incoming first year students! This won’t be up and running until summer 2012, but it will be two 3-credit courses, CAS 100H, which is a speech class that every Penn Staters must take, and an honors course on “Ethics of Global Leadership,” taught be yours truly. The first three weeks will be taught in July at University Park and then we will all pack up and head over to Oxford for three weeks with special guests and field trips. We are working through the details now and should have it already for our incoming students next summer. Stay tuned!

After meetings with Mansfield College and lunch and tea in the Senior Common Room (where the fellows of a college hang out, the grad students have the “Middle Common Room,” and undergraduates have the “Junior Common Room”) I hoofed it up the Banbury Road to St. Clare’s College international high school. It is quite an impressive school that offers and International Baccalaureate program. I met with 18 students who will be applying for college this coming year.

The night ended with a wonderful evening with two of our current students studying in Oxford for the year and two graduates. They were incredibly long suffering of the old man telling stories about when he was studying in the city of dreaming spires (can you think of a better way to spend the first four years of your married life?) and the food was very good. I cannot tell you how proud I am of all our students, past and present. It was such a wonderful evening!

Location:Oxford, UK

 

Today I will meet with folks from Mansfield College then on to meet some high school students at an IB school outside of Oxford. Finally…dinner with our students! I will be taking two of our alumni and two of our current students (and PLAers!) out to dinner at The Trout. This used to be a lovely rustic pub along the river in Wolvercote that is now quite posh. Still a great location and I think they will enjoy it.

Location:Oxford, UK

 

Actually, rather than comment I will simply state that I believe that the current system in many (but thankfully not yet most but ATL does have them in use) airports of requiring either the full-body scatter bath in X-rays (if only it were gamma rays! “Me HULK! You puny TSA man!”) or a more complete grope than I ever had even while dating in high school (sad, I know) is wrong. It is invasive, goes against my rights to privacy, and most importantly does nothing to make us more secure. The best summation I have seen was offered by Ed Stetzer (HT to Andy Crouch) who offers excellent ways and reasons to resist and even puts it in a Christian context. Write your congress person, today!

Some will disagree saying that this is just all about security and is worth it. Well, I feel it is a pound of prevention for an ounce of cure. Israel does this well and better without such invasion of privacy. How? By examining the person not their shoes or naughty bits. But if you are comfortable with the government using these scanners you should feel great about the fact that they are using them in truck-mounted versions to scan us without our knowledge. Are we really comfortable with that?

Unfortunately for this trip ATL does use these scanners so while I am won’t have to be probed or scanned on my way to SBL I may on the way back. I for one will go with the full on, let’s be more than friends, pat down. I may even follow someone’s advice and wear a kilt and go commando. Let’s make the TSA agent feel as awkward as I will! Or maybe just a full spandex suit with one of these t-shirts.

UPDATE: Ron Paul is making a lot of sense on this issue.

UPDATE 2: Cagle has collected some of the best political cartoons from the T&A TSA debacle.