"einstein" and my quartet

another story. this one is about the genius in my group for political violence, who i will call "einstein". this is the same boy who a couple weeks ago was too dumb to do the readings for his presentation. two weeks ago, we were supposed to pick out an article to distribute to the class. einstein has yet to do so.

now, my topic for the group presentation is why the patriot act unnecessarily limits civil liberties. i will argue that security can be maintained without infringing upon civil liberties.
einstein is going to present on why people should care about their civil liberties. the discerning reader will note that these topics ARE NOT THE SAME.

so yesterday, i say to einstein, "so, einstein, have you found an article yet?"
"well, actually, i think the article YOU picked out is the best for my topic."
"um. that's MY article. it's about designing an alternative to the patriot act. you have to find YOUR OWN article. about CIVIL LIBERTIES. it's not hard."

has he not done any research? did he read the article i gave to him?
let me quote the abstract for you:
"while better information and analysis is needed to fight terrorism, there is reason to fear that transforming domestic counterterrorism primarily into an intelligence matter is unlikely to appreciably increase security, but will seriously threaten civil liberties. this article outlines an alternative approach that will serve to obtain the intelligence necessary to prevent catastrophic attacks without compromising civil liberties." (italics mine)

i keep thinking about how funny it would be if we passed out a sheet with the same article on it two times, with a little note like, "mel found it first! apparently there is NO OTHER article about civil liberties!"


on another note (LOL!!), here's my quartet playing at the departmental recital on sunday! lucky for the world, the recordings seem to be really heavy on mel. (i'm on alto).

https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu/bbubnas1/public_html/Studio%20Recital%20Fall%2005/SeventhHeavenRag.MP3

https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu/bbubnas1/public_html/Studio%20Recital%20Fall%2005/Bach.MP3