Random thoughts on a Friday afternoon

Just a few thoughts as I scramble to get Sunday’s and Monday’s editorial pages done:

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Has all the talk about ethanol and coal-based fuels diminished since gasoline prices went down about 50 cents a gallon in two months?

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My alma mater -- Ohio University -- got a favorable mention in a Washington Post column about an article in Washington Monthly magazine.
First, let me say I scan the U.S. News and World Report ratings of colleges and then I chuck it into the trash. Most college ratings are nothing more than how exclusive a school is. It doesn’t tell me anything about how good a job that school does teaching its students.
So that’s why I was interested to learn Washington Monthly compiles its own list using vastly different criteria. In fact, Washington Monthly compiles more than one list. I need to get a copy of the magazine, but here is how the Post describes it.
There’s a category called “social mobility in the national universities.” The idea is to see how well colleges graduate their low-income students. The magazine invented an index that judges how good a college’s graduation rate for these students are compared to what would be expected The top-ranked schools on this index were South Carolina State University, the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, Pennsylvania State University, Ohio University and Widener University in Pennsylvania.
That’s what colleges in Appalachia are supposed to do, right? Recruit low-income students and work with them so they can earn degrees?

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It’s only four days since Labor Day, and I’m tired of election ads already.

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I don’t like looking at chess books anymore since everyone changed over from descriptive notation to algebraic. I grew up on descriptive, and I can follow 1 P-K4 P-QB4; 2 N-KB3 P-Q3 a whole lot easier than 1 e4 c5; 2 Nf3 d6.