If you're wondering what you're doing in college maybe you should get an iPad.

Relax, it's not a test. Of course if iPad gets an eventual iSight and GPS it won't matter what you do. Sooner or later you'll be an Internet sensation going viral all over the Quad and maybe the Free World. Anyway check your MacBook first if you think you're paranoid. Or beat your friends and the government and install your own spyware before 1984. Oops that was the Best Before date.

But if dorm room privacy is not an issue the really cool thing about the iPad is it's friendly day or night and won't bite hard or hump your leg when it gets frisky. It could even save you money and lugging a ton of books around if you don't really like reading textbooks and who does?

The iPad just might be the gamechanger on campus. Only one damn thing to loose. Where's that Chem text, that FN Psych crap? Is that you? Can't cramp your style either when you won't have to dump all your Brontés all over Sigma Delta Phi to answer that one important call from hell on your cell. Or if you have to play the nerd living at home, you can always take your iPad along self-consciously like "I'm going to a study group at the Longhorn" (Bar). The iPad can be your escape window to Beer Pong and new worlds beyond.

If you still haven't bought into the Apple Universe, ask Steve Jobs on Twitter, why?

@LosingItInCollege Everything we do is a mistake sooner or later. http://by.ly/fuuk

@StephenAtHome Yeah if some guy named Steve posts our ass out of context. http://yfrog.com/mu3xpj

OK, so we won that one. But speaking of Obama isn't that what we're getting with the iPad? A flashy but no real Flash gizmo with a world of Apps nobody really needs and a straitjacket NoAndroid OS with limited productivity Ops? Try printing something that sucks or doesn't suck like right now. No says Steve. Wait until November for iOS 4.2.

Yes We Know Steve. We're All Slaves.

Funny, reminds me of the Obama gameplan, like waiting for the Obama we elected. Any chance before 2012? But hold it right there, it may be a vacuous comparison. (Alternate video link)



Obama Stone Age Gameplan For The College Of The Future

If you're already in the Apple Universe it doesn't matter what Obama says. Fuck it, buy one. In for a pocket-melting Nano, in for Death by VISA at $829.00 for 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G.

And get everything else you need for only $224.00 extra like the optional kickstand and SD card reader??? that you'll be sorry you never bothered ordering.

So what's $1053.00 plus tax do for college?* Suddenly you're cool. The future is now. See lame AP video with iPads in adorable picture frame standup wallets in a goofy college classroom setting. Maybe not so cool. Dumb do-nothing iPads on the face of it. But you can always bite the bullet and go back to your laptop or netbook for Skype or video chat with iPhone buddies on Apple FaceTime or read a book. Or get an Android or Windows 7 tablet with full pdf support, webcam and Flash and maybe save a bundle eventually when somebody makes a fully featured iClone for cheap.

Or be brave and try something even better now like the more compact Toshiba Libretto W100 running W7 with webcam and 2 screens and extras that folds like a book though still Apple pricey at $1100.00 but in the iPad ballpark. For cutting edge style and quality Toshiba also rivals Apple. I've got a compact Protégé that doesn't need a yearly replacement like in Steve's Apple Universe. But wait, there is a dirt cheap alternative. (Alternate video link)



ObamaPad College Demo

Well? Maybe there's been some mistake? It doesn't look like the ObamaPad will ever work. And if there's no known competition for the iPad not everything looks as rosy as a MacIntosh either at Apple. See the other Steve (Wozniak) below who has never been seen anywhere near an iPad or a MacBook even at this prestigious and important book signing.

iWOZ Signing iPaper Books

Is Apple going back to paper stickies and soldering pencils? Can you smell the Cork burning?

The Future At Apple (Cork)

Have Steve and Steve been watching the Obama Stone Age Gameplan above? Is Astroturfing the Apple parking lot in Cork Ireland a good idea? Only if no one is working for Apple anymore. iPads now cloning iPads, is that it? Is that the AppleObama iWorld ahead? Nobody works and nobody gets paid either. Steve still has his Jobs at the September Apple Get-togethers. Obama takes over Larry King Live but keeps his day job? Then why are kids going to college? To buy an iPad? If an iPad gets you a job I guess that's OK.

The Serious Stuff: Buying an iPad To Read A Book

With Tablets and Tablet Dust settling a year down the road, the iPad still has the lead for college if you want one thing the others don't have, an eBook reader experience in color right now. With Apps you can not only get about 30,000 titles from iTunes free (only in the USA), you can also port your books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble onto your iPad. Though not a seamless fit, say some customers who own Kindles and the B&N nook eReaders. But you've got huge access to an amazing number of cheaper than paper books including college textbooks and some are now re-engineered to custom fit the iPad experience like the (you pay girl) special iPad editions of big magazines and newspapers.

Do You Really Need To? No.

Textbooks and other books are nothing new for laptops or PCs or some Smart Phones, so you can slog through the aesthetic difficulties without another $1,000 for the iPad and enjoy 50% savings over printed books just the same. About all you'd be missing is the re-engineered textbooks for the iPad, so far just one bookshelf, that incorporate video and interactive note taking you can share with friends like on a social network. If that's too cool to ignore, well you're stuck with iPad as the best thing around. But since these iPad only eTextbooks are heavy on memory you need the 64 Gig for enough wiggle room or you'll be stuck in $499.00 Apple hell.

eTextbooks And Where To Get Them

iPad Only: So far Inkling has the lead in customized eTextbooks for the iPad, only a few titles so far in this new market, but other book repackagers are on it.

iPad And Everything Else: CourseSmart has about 10,000 titles that will work on the iPhone, iPod and now the iPad. But these eTextbooks were designed and still work on any computer or laptop you might have (good news) which will give you most of the features you need like Search and Note-taking. Recent CourseSmart titles might be fully optimized for the iPad and no doubt they'll go whole hog on the iPad if everybody else does. CourseSmart iTunes Apps for all the iiiApples here.

For Everything Else And iPad Later: CaféScribe has about 8,000 titles and will work on PC and Mac, but so far there isn't an App for the iPad. It's also the site to get your free digital edition if you have a College Bookstore Access Code for the paper textbook you bought. Don't knock it, paper was fun. (Alternate video link)



Remember Paper Books?

Basically if you're a Freshman in Arts & Humanities with a lousy Windows laptop, and no other eReader, you can't lose if you hang onto that lousy laptop. Then going all the way for the bigtop iPad should get you through your first 4 years in style unless you need the dreaded Adobe pdf. Maybe somebody at Adobe could take Steve out for a Martinis and show him on an iPad what a big pain the iPad is without easy pdf support. And no Adobe Flash. Hey Steve, is this the ultimate Consumer Experience?

There are workarounds, but? Saving a grand on an iPad is easier especially if you're in Sciences. Scientists gorge on pdf files day and night. Get some sleep instead with a real laptop. Anyway Einstein never had an iPad, never read an eBook and used a pencil and the back of an envelop for E=MC^2.

More eBooks From iTunes: Yes, it's iBooks, what else? For iPads, iiiApples and the kitchen sink. 30,000 free titles but for now only in the USA. iBooks with its pdf converter to EPUB is also locked into the USA. There are other pdf converters fortunately. DigitalInspiration reviews the Top 6 pdf Apps. And if you aren't Apple Certified and can't read EPUB from iBooks there are Apps for that discussed on this link in EpublishersWeekly.

More eBooks From Amazon: If you don't have a Kindle you can still get a Kindle App from iTunes for the iPad and the other iiiApples. Now that's a lot of books and textbooks for cheaper than paper. The wow factor is the freebies for the college litterati who won't have to pay a dime for thousands of free classics in Kindle format from Amazon. On the same page you'll find reading Apps that work for the iPhone, PC, Mac and Blackberry. Amazon also carries eTextbooks you pay for.

More eBooks From Barnes & Noble: Same thing if you're looking for books in print. You don't need a B&N eReader, just the NOOK App for iPad. Like Amazon you can get a million plus books at B&N, including ebooks and etextbooks you could read on other NonApples. Some thousands are free or extra cheap. Take a B&N eBooks Tour.

More eBooks From BooksOnBoard: About 400,000 general titles for all platforms, and a Stanza App for iPad. BooksOnBoard Apps and Tour.

More eBooks From Google Books: This Search Megalopolis covers about all books and eBooks and often supplies free previews. Google Books will tell you where to go to buy a title and has the largest number of free eBooks, rare out of print and the classics. Foreign language books too. Free Downloads are usually in pdf format but a growing number of EPUB files are available for iPad.

How to Find and Download Public Domain Books from Google Book Search (pdf files and EPUB)
How do I read Google Books on my iPad? (EPUB)

More eBooks Free From Project Gutenberg: About 100,000 public domain titles available from not-for-profit Project Gutenberg for free downloads. Supports iPad and most eReaders through Apps. This is the gilt-edged literary archive. If you're looking for a readable copy of some ancient manuscript, try here first. Donations welcome.

More eBooks: If you Google around you'll find many specialized eLibraries and eBookstores. Try this list from About.com: Read Books Online for Free.

Research Materials: A free and helpful source on any academic topic, where you can find papers, essays, reports and books, is OnlineBooks4Free, about 10,000 titles of historical interest sorted by subject. More the old library approach rather than a hundred pages of Search Results and junk on whatever. Use Advanced Search when you can. Still all this Googling in the digital jungle never seems to end, that is once you've got your iPad and Tech issues carefully hammered down. Doesn't leave much time for reading. Irony is not just a literary device.

iPad Downside

Really need one? The lack of full support for Adobe pdf is a bigger headache than it looks. A lot of students especially Grad Students and Post Docs need pdf not only for reading books and published papers, but most publish their own papers on pdf too. If that's you, forget the Apple Universe. If you're in Science trash the iPad now! iBooks too is USA only. And the lack of Adobe Flash makes surfing the Net a pain when most websites use it for animations and video.

OK, if you don't mind some pain, there's Copying a PDF to iPad Sucks!!! No no no, says Apple Easy file sharing.

Other downsides on the iPad besides the price and monthly $data plan$, are the still small just under 10 inch screen that washes out in bright light too. It's not great for absorbing the large double-page spread of textbooks that often need 2 iPads or more of space to sink into the brain. Think of Science or Accounting where you need to concentrate on figures or graphs that are just too damn small to manage without zooming and scrolling all the time. Flipping back to another page you're thinking of, isn't easy even if you can type in a search box for it when keywords vanish under the influence of Lady Gaga in your earbuds. And what do you do if your whole world on one iPad crashes or the battery dies a horrible death? The end.

Paper doesn't do that and you can always find your notes in the margins. If textbooks are insanely expensive, there's always Used at a big discount. Maybe low tech ain't so bad. Besides, whatever the iPad can do, it can't give you a totally reliable and comfortable reading experience. Paper can't be beat. And there's a nice trend in paper textbooks to supply a free digital copy of the book on disk or via an online coupon.


Forget The iPad And Get A Kindle 3

"I want to point out that I do not own, or ever intend to own a DRM-laden Kindle. I was just looking at it." Matt Lee

Matt's right, but are we already doomed by DRM greed? Ask Apple. My guess is somewhere at the bottom of this Apple Century of Erosion of Rights we won't own anything, but we'll keep paying for it.

Take the Kindle for instance. You buy an eBook for it from Amazon, but you can't loan it out to a friend. It's only partly your eBook. Nuts. At least at Barnes & Noble they don't have DRM for that. You can loan it out for 2 whole weeks. But it automatically returns itself to your Nook where paper books often don't.

Forget The Kindle. Try The Nook

So maybe you should go for the B&N Nook. It beats the iPad and the Kindle. It's an Android here today. You can add more memory with Micro SD. Replace the battery yourself! Reads pdf and EPUB right out of the box. Listen to MP3s. Web Browser, Color Touch Navigation. Wi-Fi for $149 and $199 for that and 3G. You'll need the 3G Internet if you want to buy and download eBooks directly to your Nook from the B&N online bookstore even when its tethered at home.

The cheaper Wi-Fi model will do that too but for Internet only at AT&T Hotspots or at B&N stores. At home your personal Wi-Fi won't work with the Nook. You'll need a patchcord to sync the Nook like an MP3 player. Then you can download files from your PC you already have like pdfs and music, even a screensaver. That's the major hassle with limited Wi-Fi on the Nook. Spend the extra $50 for 3G. But if you've never used one, try before you buy at your local B&N Bookstore.

So an eReader and your old PC or laptop. $200 extra or the Apple $1,000? If you're heavy on literature and languages, where reading is the thing and the texts you need are out of copyright and free, going the eReader route is a no brainer. The Nook or the new Kindle 3 $10 less for both models, would pay for itself the first year in free downloads. Remember the iPad needs a data plan like from AT&T that rips out $15 or $25 and easily more from your beer budget every single month.

Both screens are similar 6 inch eInk displays or paperpack size that are easier to tote around and work better outdoors than iPad but need a night light in bed.

The bigger Kindle DX has a bigger screen but why bother when it it's pushing its way into pricey iPad territory?

You'll be able to test drive and buy Kindles soon at Staples so Staples says. Another good idea. Fly it first. In the meantime if you want a look at all the big eReaders together including the iPad like soldiers in a row, you can watch this coy Kindle 3 NYT video.

In the end if you're this close to flipping for an iPad no matter what, go ahead. You can do no wrong in the Apple Universe. But make sure you have the minimum laptop backup. Or should you get the new better world Samsung Galaxy Tablet? Not any cheaper either.

Still confused? This iPad Review from The-eBook-Reader takes you back to square one. Plus there are other eReader options that could keep you awake all night. Throw a party.

* If you're a real card-carrying student and you still gotta have an iPad you can check out your local college bookstore in person and try to nail down the must have Apple discount from Apple.

--Alan Gillis

Stop Press: Update Sept 9, 2010/ Flash apps blessed by Jobs

Looks like Steve got his Martini Moment with Adobe #1 John Warnock. "No more talking Flash Trash . . ." Or maybe the source is inspired Martinis for lunch at MSNBC. The official Apple Statement by Apple from Apple PR is totally fuzzy on Adobe, like a Martini hangover with a damp sock in it. Ergo PDFs should be fine too after another Martini. Wrong again. There is no mention of Adobe and if Apps with Flash are allowed by Apple, there is still no Flash enabled for websites. New Apps from the Apple App store might include Flash if Apple relaxes enough restrictions on development tools to allow say a Flash-based game App for a new Ping Steve Pong. And Steve's Ping was already ponged by spam a day later. So there are no guarantees for Ping Steve Pong in Flash either. But I'd love to see it at the App Store.

The media storm around Michael Jackson is less about him and more about the media monster that makes and breaks our pop icons. We still don't know how or why he died. All we have is a lot of confusion from a lot of insane coverage.

Armies of journalists swoop down on him again. Drugs and death, the new postmortem, not quite as sensational as ruining him and his reputation with unsubstantiated charges of extreme moral depravity, the boy-man-god a pedophile, but drugs and death a suitable followup and a glorious media fire for the final end of a fallen star.

Questions, a lot of questions and conflicting and misleading answers and more doubt and misery. A lot of really great friends who weren't there for him. A lot of questions nobody asks. Journalists paid to ask them, but they don't.

Police slow to see that a simple death of the King of Pop doesn't make sense. Joe Jackson apparently, always say apparently when covering Michael, Michael's father ordering 2 moving vans to remove Michael's effects from the scene of his death, a rented mansion belonging to the Nation of Islam, rented at 3 or 4 times the going market rate for $100,000 a month. Janet, Michael's sister, dropping by the same day, but what was taken away from a possible crime scene two days after Michael dies? Does she know, does Joe estranged from Michael to boot, have any authority to mess things up for the inevitable police investigation?

Then a belated appearance by LA police confiscating 2 large bags of drugs after the moving vans have been long gone.

Then later still, the DEA shuffles in after nobody knows what happened at Michael's mansion before, during and after Michael's death, what was removed, what might have been planted later.

A lot of Diprivan found by the DEA, missed by the LAPD, unlabeled, IV anesthesia used only to knockout a patient for an operation, but what was it doing there? Michael couldn't sleep without it sometimes?

What doctor would prescribe it for insomnia when a small overdose is easily fatal, when ordinary doses are also sometimes fatal? It happens under ideal conditions in hospital operating rooms with an anaesthesiologist present monitoring vital signs.

Some very close to Michael say he wasn't a druggie, abhorred and never used recreational drugs and only took prescription drugs like anyone else would. Started with Pepsi, the hair on fire commercial, later a broken leg, broken vertebrae, performance injuries, then the painful cosmetic surgery and possibly skin cancer. And beat up badly twice for months by the media on unsubstantiated child molestation charges that would depress anyone. More and more people close to him thought he had a prescription drug problem. If he did, no one seems to have actually caught him doing drugs. One of his former bodyguards, Matt Fiddes, says he and Uri Geller often confiscated drugs and needles lying around. And Michael was in rehab once though what for exactly? The same people who say he was addicted to prescription drugs like the TV journalist Diane Dimond who broke the pedophilia allegations, say he also had a big drinking problem back then.

The more you repeat a story, the more people believe it, true or not, as the media and psychologists must know. If that's hard to swallow since we think we're not so easily fooled, remember when disinformation and propaganda were a daily routine made famous by Lenin who invented the formula: Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

Even easier to smear anybody if you use unnamed sources. According to a close, but unnamed member of the Jackson family Michael took daily shots of the super-painkiller Demerol and had a shot an hour before he died.

Anyone see needle tracks on Michael's arms? An unnamed Jackson family source did. Noted on the autopsy? No info released yet. An unnamed source commenting on the body, "surprised at how healthy Jackson was."


Unnamed sources always seem to be very sure of themselves. Some very close to Michael say he lived on prescription drugs. Look how thin he was, how little he ate. Then one of the people he knew best, Grace Rwaramba from Rwanda on staff as an assistant and promoted to nanny his kids was reported as saying by Times Online that she often had to pump his stomach when he mixed his drugs. On a news video later she denied she ever said that she did, didn't know how to pump a stomach either. Then she went further in print, saying she never even spoke to Times Online. Her full rebuttal to the long and juicy Times Online article was published in The Huffington Post.

The two autopsies and the lab tests will finally tell us something about the cause of death when they're released in a month or so. For now, who and what can you believe?

Could Michael have been saved? The AEG concert promoter for Michael's comeback series in London, Randy Phillips and the tour's director, Kenny Ortega, both said he was in great shape the night before he died. The AEG This Is It video of Michael's rehearsal at the LA Staples Center 2 nights before he died [also at the above link] confirms he wasn't on a doped-up downer going into London. If he could have been saved, the only one who could have done it on the spot was his cardiologist, Dr Conrad Murray, who tried to resuscitate Michael when he found him collapsed in bed that catastrophic day in LA's Holmby Hills, still alive.

But Murray the cardiologist failed at CPR, and there was some delay in calling an ambulance. How long was that? 40 minutes until the ambulance arrived says The Guardian. Murray couldn't find a phone, but he had his own cell phone, but he didn't call because he didn't know the address where he himself was living, doctor in residence at Michael's Holmby Hills Estate, that any goofball at 911 would be able to track down by a street name or 5 blocks from you know where. Stupid shit if you're Michael Jackson's doctor and you're doing CPR on Michael's too soft a bed for CPR when Michael should be on the floor as the 911 Operator reminded him on the phone when Michael's security guy finally called 911. Stupid shit when you're supposed to be a cardiologist and you're not Board certified, letting that lapse last year, when you don't pay your debts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to creditors who were after you because your heart clinic was flatlining, like Michael who died under your care.

If CPR doesn't work it's a bloody emergency and you get help. Murray said he never gave drugs like Demerol to Michael, but if Michael took an accidental overdose himself of something or other, CPR isn't going to help. You pump his stomach, you get him to a hospital for life support, a heart-lung machine, maybe a total blood transfusion when you suspect poisoning by unknown drugs, but when the ambulance came the paramedics still did CPR for another 45 minutes, though the nearest hospital was 6 minutes away. Stupid shit, but shit happens when you're stupid.

The LAPD tow away Murray's BMW that same day, oddly not really his anyway. Great. Smart. Could be full of AMA Journals. Why not check the mansion first before 2 vans clear out a mountain of potential evidence in broad daylight with news cameras rolling?

The first sensible thing Murray does is he gets a lawyer. Then he talks to the LAPD for 3 hours. No one says what happened, just that he was cooperative. Not a suspect. Yeah, great.

A little later Dr Deepak Chopra talks to Larry King on CNN. He says Michael asked him for Oxycontin, another major painkiller back in 2005 and Deepak refused. Deepak warned Michael about getting hooked on prescription pain meds, but Michael didn't want to talk about it, didn't return his calls later. Deepak talked around the problem with Michael so he could stay in touch with him. Said to Larry that there were plenty of enablers in LA, doctors who liked to hang around celebrities and prescribe whatever narcotics they wanted. No shortage either of plastic surgeons I'd add, who turned Michael into a freak.

With all the bullshit flying, was Deepak right about Michael? If Michael had his own enablers would he bother Deepak about an easily obtainable prescription drug? With a lot on his mind, with things going badly since the embarrassing Bashir documentary and new allegations suddenly surfacing, Michael then was in over his head in the biggest fight of his life. $18 Million in legal fees for the child molestation case that consumed the nation and Michael too. Not guilty on all counts. Maybe all Michael wanted was a little help from a friend he was staying with to numb his pain? Michael was a child after all, as everyone who knew him well always said.

But then there's another screaming media report I saw on TV a few days ago, but oddly not archived on the corporate website, that said Michael was spending $48,000 a month on prescriptions and owed his pharmacy $100,000 when he died. But if true why isn't this big story plastered everywhere? Hope somebody at the DEA has been watching the megaTV investigation for leads. Can't be sure of that either after the LAPD apparently missed the televised Big Joe Jackson Moving Day.

If that's really $48,000 a month for Michael's drugs that's way more than 2 bags full collected by the LAPD. Enough to stuff an SUV every month and even so, how much can a single human being consume? 20 tabs of Demerol per day would turn you into a cataleptic couch potato for less than $1200 a month.

What's known? What's proven? Nothing really. Dead like Elvis.

Michael was married for awhile to Elvis' daughter Lisa Marie Presley. She said Michael told her years ago he was worried he'd end up dead like Elvis. "He Knew" she wrote on MySpace the day after Michael died. A premonition, a guess, or fate? More questions, no answers.

Michael Jackson's public funeral/ceremonial is set for tomorrow Tuesday 10AM Los Angeles time at the Staples Center. 1.6 million people applied for 20,000 free tickets, but all the major U.S. TV networks are covering it. If you're abroad and don't have access, you should be able to catch it on the Internet, on E! Online and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis

Michael Jackson Videos

Moonwalkers from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo. Toronto, the night after Michael's death.

From AEG, a hot promo video in advance of the London shows on the casting and rehearsals for This Is It [alternate link] at the LA Staples Center.



From AEG, a last look at Michael [alternate link] from the LA Staples Center rehearsal 2 nights before he died.


*****UPDATE July 10, 2009

BBC: Jackson foul play 'not ruled out'

The head of Los Angeles police has refused to rule out murder in the investigation into the death of singer Michael Jackson, two weeks ago. . . .

*****UPDATE June 25, 2010 One Year Later

LaToya 2009 Tribute to June 25, 2010

A day in the life of the Michael Jackson Legend lights a fire on TV with a dozen tribute shows and interviews starting 8AM Friday. NYC Radio kicks in right through the weekend with live shows from the Apollo Friday afternoon with the Rev Al Sharpton's Tribute on WBLS 107.5 FM (listen live), then at 9PM "Throwback Comes to Harlem" on WRKS 98.7 FM (no Internet live feed, but watch their MJ videos on KISS FM TV).

Try MTV in between for "Michael Jackson Top 10 Video Countdown" 5-6:30PM, and "Michael Jackson's Influence" 6:30PM. Here's the full Jackson Friday TV/Radio schedule.

In Los Angeles fans will be making a quiet pilgrimage to nearby Forest Lawn cemetery, though the mausoleum will be open only for family and their guests.

In Gary Indiana, Michael's mother Katherine will dedicate a monument to her son outside the old family home where the Jackson Five started out. A candelight vigil follows with the song "We are the World".

Michael Jackson: A Second Life

From the patchy, inconsistent and conflicting media reports on the death of Michael Jackson, that were better at knocking him down while destroying his reputation in a similar frenzy not so long ago, what do you get? Enough confusion to spin out his tragic death for million$ more. Sorry Michael. A year later and "What's Left Behind" we're nowhere near the truth. But the legend lives on.

See Jackson perform in this clean no yakyak video 2 nights before his death at the Staples Center LA rehearsal.

Since then Jackson videos on Youtube and even official promos of the Staples rehearsals have been taken down by the moneymen. Buy the CD, see the movie, get the the DVD. But Jackson fans keep uploading new stuff like this Jackson concert mix (sorry deleted) but watch this one.

On the official This Is It movie site, there's a nice surprise. Watch a clean stack of Tributes and oldie Jackson videos like They Don't Care About Us, Thriller, Beat It and more.



On michaeljackson.com there's another bonus. Listen to some great audio demos on this link that starts up with a fabulous a cappella Beat It and then click for more tracks from the new This Is It CD. Finally everybody's right. The London show would have been impossible to beat.

--Alan Gillis/ NewsHammer

If you've graduated, here's Catch 22. You might have done everything right or wrong or half-way, but you won't know the results 'til later. By then you'll have your failure options open and a chance or two to screw up some more. About everybody's in the same boat in case you're worried. With a bit of luck you'll succeed in something or other.

It's not an overly pessimistic view according to both Joseph Heller and the better known, but ficticious Murphy of Murphy's Law. But they didn't invent the absurd. For all you non-English Majors, and some of those too who skipped classical allusions, you won't recall this 2500 year old Greek chestnut: "Call no man happy until he is dead." It's not the first citation of absurdity in human history, but you could Google back further and write a dissertation yourself if you're going nowhere on Punctuation in Middle English.

Sounds like a degree isn't much of a guarantee. Depends. Sure, Harvard beats Okiedokie Law School and even if you have no aptitude for law as a lawyer, it won't matter, except to your clients who'll never know that lousy lawyers graduate too from Harvard OMG. Always room for one more lawyer too. So there is a future at least in prestigious degrees and the Bar. Make that a Whisky Bar.

If you're in a serious quandary about what to do now, I beg your pardon. I've been there myself. Oddly I never got any good advice either. Of course good advice can be wrong, so luckily I didn't have to go through that. Bad advice was the big thing. It was everywhere.

The best bad advice I ever got at university was from three profs who independently agreed that there was no future in teaching as the competition was fierce, openings few, and even if you got in, tenure would probably be dangled forever like a carrot, leading you deeper and deeper into the infernal muck of extremely petty university politics on campus and the equally absurd descent into a meaningless social life at home, entertaining and toadying colleagues to death to score some points before you were dismissed for a trifle. Something downright Dickensian at best. They were right about a lot of moldy ivy colleges, but also very wrong to meddle in someone's future. What made it worse was they were all brilliant in their fields. Like Darwins telling you you had no future in Evolution.



So stick to your guns if you're still aiming for a teaching position or anything else of value to yourself. Ask around. Maybe you'll get some good advice. Not from people with a professional and sometimes secret egomania. They can do it. Nobody else can. Now with the economic meltdown, you'll probably hear the same thing from everybody. Don't waste your time trying to get a faculty position or a fellowship. Better odds with Powerball.

On the practical side you should have some passion and aptitude for your chosen field, beyond a high GPA. Here's where Oprah's Gut Feeling might make sense.

But most of you with your first degree are wondering what to do next, not sure you've landed in the right ballpark or in the right team. A BA or BSc doesn't open many doors. It opens personal ones at least, so there's always value in education even if no one else sees it.

Going on to a higher degree would seem best if you can. This I'd say is foolproof. You're bound to win as you've already got a minor degree in beating the system. Here too you might be able to change or refine your career focus. A complete change of direction is only for the brave. To go from Arts to Medicine via another Bachelor's Degree and wing it for another decade is OK if you're sure you're going to win the Nobel too.

But should you? If you're a nerd, get all the credentials you can. You'll need them. You might even grow out of this phase by working hard or at least convince everybody that you're some kind of genius. It could backfire if you go for multiple PhDs. Then the truth will probably come out, that you're a professional nerd. There's a nervous breakdown hazard too. A nerd space develops.

If you're happy-go-lucky and lucky to boot, there's not much you can't do if you've got some talent and ambition. In any field these are the people who make it. And they make it look easy. But if you want to be a rocket scientist you need a Master's at least. For an artist you can do just about anything as long as you produce. There are some rules.



If you're still not sure what you want to do, then play it safe and stay in school, but browse around and sit in on other classes you're curious about, until you hit something great. It's a U Turn that might work. If you're in a big rut it might be your school or the people you hang out with. Take a higher degree where you want to be, like trading the snowbelt for California.

Packing in education for awhile, to get a job or travel and get back in school later, is also better left to the brave.

Easy to get sidetracked if you can get a decent job by falling into the standard routine of making a living and going into more debt to make yourself comfortable, to reward yourself for working. Often a fatal career move, but if you're lucky you could discover something worth doing and do it. Here you'll be making it on your own. You're bound to get little encouragement and help if you're not so lucky. Your best chances are counting on the family fortune or the family spa business you can take over just in case. If not, you might wind up married with kids before you know it, and slaving away to make it work.

If you are working you'll be the junior and that means everybody will try to steal your ideas and get the credit for your work. Watch out for mentors who say they'll keep you under their wing. Nowadays they'll use you like the bosses you hate, but you won't know it 'til it's too late. Of course there are exceptions, but if you're not as astute as some writers of fiction, you'll be embarrassed at how gullible you can be.

Odds are if you leave school you're not going back, so think about it carefully. If it's too difficult to continue your education for financial or other reasons, then you could make something of your future if you're entrepreneurial or a budding impresario who can manage people and get them to work for themselves and you. Otherwise it's likely to be a 9-5 world.

Then there are those who are tired of school and want a break. See the world while they can. For dilettantes or artists, travel's a good way to find out where you stand. Others might fall in love with the Grape and go into viticulture. History comes alive when you travel and you could find that magic place and period that fills you with wonder. Architecture is best lived too in some fabled old city. If all you know is your own backyard you're likely not to have been exposed to much beyond a dry museum culture. The decaying beauty of Ancient Rome is still in Rome and could inspire you to be a conservationist, a restorer of antiquities, an antiques dealer or historian, maybe a romance novelist or why not an architect? Travel is about discovery.

The trick though about travel is if you save your money for that, you might not go if you have to work for it. Thousands in the bank. Should you go or spend it on an Alfa Romeo Spider? On an extreme makeover? If you want to breeze through Europe or check out some other fantasy for a few months it's expensive and exhausting. It's worth it in the end, but consider working abroad. In a lot of places you can teach English if you have a degree and the easy to get before you go TOEFL certificate. If you don't have these two, you'll be stuck on starvation wages tutoring and washing dishes.

So you've got options. Take one and investigate it first. Make a move when you get that gut feeling.

--Alan Gillis

One thing the French are very proud of is their universities. Not only are standards high, apart from yearly fees of about $300, higher education is free. It's also independent of commercial interests. Big business doesn't have any control over the curriculum like it has in many countries now through financing job training for business and commerce, and university research to suit itself and its goals: profits from new product development. In France you don't go to school to get a job. You get an education first.

The contrast couldn't be more extreme between the high costs other students pay or can't pay and so don't go, and the ready access to education in France. As fundamental, is the decline in education that France has largely avoided, with students more literate before they go to university, and more mature on the need to work once they get in. Anything threatening a solid French education is taken seriously. The new threat is government reform.

Universities are slipping everywhere with huge classes and an assembly line approach. Worse is the trend in many American and European institutions of transforming themselves into extremely expensive glorified Community Colleges, with Arts and Humanities especially relegated to the dustbin of we can't afford this and who needs this anyway. The proposed reforms aren't tackling these problems. French reform is about efficiency, accountability of lecturers-researchers and the value of their research or lack of it. It's also about giving universities more autonomy, a new direction toward a corporate merger with industry and commerce: a new source of financing. It's the current game plan in American Universities for better or worse. The reaction in France from academics and students has been an overwhelming no way!

General mobilizations of profs and students since February 5th against the new proposed law reforming universities, the LRU, have broken out from university campuses into the streets, paralyzing French higher education. From a public Princesse de Clèves read-in in Paris to make a point on the importance of a liberal education, to mass demonstrations against the LRU's barrage of reforms. President Sarkozy and Co are under attack. Some protesters have even accused the President not only of being out of touch with the French esprit but of using poor French to knock the University Establishment, so what does he know about education?

So little it seems that he's alienated 70-odd universities against his reforms, not just students but the lecturers-researchers who started the massive strikes throughout France since his colloquial jab in January at the cushy non-competitive university life enjoyed by unproductive profs and researchers who publish 30% to 50% less (in some disciplines) say than their British counterparts.

In the name of greater university autonomy and efficiency Sarkozy wants to give university presidents, presidential powers over academic staff and researchers and research itself. Staff performance will be reviewed every four years. Researchers who don't publish enough could be punished by having to teach more. Universities will be encouraged to find private financing for research and programs, pitting them against each other. Some 900 jobs cut. Already in place, one in two vacant positions due to retirement, not filled as the Sarkozy policy goes in the Civil Service.

Sarkozy's January get with it speech from the Elysée, in defense of the LRU reforms made public last October by his minister for higher education Valérie Pécresse, has sparked a May '68 reaction that has shutdown nearly all universities in France. Though many lecturers-researchers supporting the strikes are still drawing salaries while they strike, an element of farce not ignored by their non-striking colleagues, still most strikers claim they are trying to save the semester by carrying on with classes where they can, even in cafés. The strikes and marches go on in spite of French government backpedaling on the LRU. Entirely peaceful, good-humored protests that have simply closed down the universities without any use of force.

Only at the Sorbonne in Paris have tensions skyrocketed. The anti-reform movement took the offensive, finally clashing with the forces of order. Here's the direct link, if your reader doesn't support the window below, to a dramatic student video on the Sorbonne occupation from the Sorbonne's student newsmagazine, Contrepoint.

Blocage de la sorbonne 4 mars 2009
by contrepoint

Up until March 4th, the Sorbonne, France's oldest and largest university, managed to remain open until students and profs tried to occupy it twice. The next day they voted for a total strike and now the Sorbonne is under siege by security forces to keep militants out, hundreds of police and private security guards called in by the university administration. With classes disrupted anyway by anti-reform students and profs sneaking in, the lecture halls were finally locked.


Tensions throughout France were high the next day March 5th with planned demonstrations in many cities against La LRU - "mon cul!" and the Loi Pécresse - "mes fesses!" 24,000 to 43,000 marched in Paris countered by 9,000 police, and this just before Pécresse was to announce further concessions the next day.

Over three sessions of negotiations with 4 unions representing many of the 57,000 or so lecturers-researchers, Pécresse modified the LRU, meeting some objections, returning to the status quo on others, but hanging on to one important change:

a peer review of performance every 4 years.
Forcing researchers to teach more if their research performance wasn't good enough, was dropped. And evaluations would not come from the office of a university president as before, but from the CNU, the national university council.

Not good enough for the largest of the unions, Snesup-FSU, which hadn't even participated in the discussions with the government. Le Monde quoted a union representative as "noting" the new "inflections" but they were "far from being sufficient".
If the modified LRU goes ahead now this September it means no jobs cut through 2011.

The main bone of contention, performance evaluation goes ahead without any teeth, amounting to another academic exercise, embarrassing, time-consuming, stressful and perhaps unfair. How do you evaluate research and teaching and then measure it? And couldn't such a process become political?

Though some academics in France and Britain think a movement to accountability on

performance is a good idea. After all it's a well known fact that some researchers don't like teaching and some lecturers aren't good at teaching either. In the end it's the students who pay for these university indulgences. Though how do you fix abuses and poor performance without some penalties attached? How do you avoid alienating the majority of lecturers-researchers who do their best anyway, when you start poking into their careers, or fishing for personal problems they might have that affect their performance?


What it comes down to is an attack on university tenure. It's the same sort of protection awarded to judges in the courts of Europe. Once appointed they aren't accountable for their performance. It makes perfect sense to leave them to do their work, instead of having to defend it. The screening process should be enough to select the best people, and the laws of the land to keep them honest. The judges of the U.S. Supreme Court also have tenure and by and large tenure for university academics is longstanding practice and fundamental to academic freedom most everywhere.


It also means politics can't sink into university life, that profs aren't afraid of being fired for expressing opinions or being critical of anything in society. It's an essential right which shouldn't be compromised by governments and university administrations, even if there are some faults and abuses Sarkozy wants to fix.

In any case tenure is under attack in other ways since the 1960's when many profs supported the students over university policies and government failures. This is a hot issue which only simmers in the university community. If you haven't got tenure, complaining could get you fired.


Tenure used to be automatic after a number of years for an assistant professor. Now it's being withheld at some universities indefinitely on no other grounds except the additional costs of tenure, added salary and benefits and no other way of cutting staff during a downturn. This puts a considerable strain on the younger and financially strapped assistant profs still paying off enormous student loans who perhaps might feel obliged to earn their tenure in other ways, if they can't get it through their academic brilliance. It creates a corporate atmosphere of having to climb the ladder of success, where money, power and position become the objects of university life and politics the means.

The struggle between the French government and the universities goes on. There's no end in sight. A dozen academic and student unions and associations voted March 6th to continue the strikes.

When a million French took to the streets in January to voice their discontent with business and commerce and government inaction on the economic crisis, what could Sarkozy expect when he wanted to fix something French that wasn't broken? --NewsHammer 3/09/2009

French Sources:

Le Monde 7/03/2009, Compromis entre Valérie Pécresse et quatre syndicats sur le statut des enseignants-chercheurs

AFP 5/03/2009, Universités: des milliers de manifestants à Paris et en province

Contrepoint, coverage by students of the Sorbonne

Portail de veille sur le mouvement de l'Université, a message board on the LRU Protest

UniversitésEnLutte, a major association concerned with university issues and the LRU

Sauvonsl'Université, a major association concerned with university issues and the LRU

Elysée 01/22/2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy's speech on LRU reforms, video and transcript


English Sources: UniversityWorldNews

France: Academics strike over job status, 2/01/2009

France: Lecturers strike despite increased funding, 2/08/2009

France: Strikes spread despite mediator, 2/15/2009

France: End to academic strikes?, 3/01/2009

France: Lecturers vote to continue strike, 3/08/2009