After the jump, a random 24-related thought, followed by some spoileriffic humor. Well, it’s spoileriffic if you haven’t seen Monday night’s episode. My initial “random thought” isn’t spoileriffic unless you’re several episodes behind.
P.S. As you may have noticed, I’ve finally given 24 its own blog category.
Random thought:
Do you think it’s occurred to Jack yet that his decision to kill his friend Curtis in order to save the life of terrorist-turned-peacemaker Hamri Al-Assad has turned out to be not just pointless, but counterproductive? Not only was Assad killed in a bomb blast a mere seven hours after Jack saved him from Curtis’s wrath, but by saving Assad’s life just before 10:00 AM, Jack set in motion a sequence of events that led to Assad being framed for the bomb blast at the White House bunker just before 5:00 PM, which in turn gave the homicidal maniac Vice President Powers Boothe Noah Daniels all the justification he needed to convince the Joint Chiefs that a nuclear strike on “Assad’s country” (which has not been named, BTW) would be a swell idea. If Jack had let Curtis kill Assad, everyone would be better off right now! (Especially Curtis!) Heh.
Anyway, here are some funny (but spoileriffic) excerpts from The Amazing Steve’s summary of Monday night’s episode, over on Dave Barry’s 24 blog:
8:16 pm – Back in the Planning Room of Death, Noah is getting a briefing on how to bomb a country that’s basically in the stone age back to the pre-stone age, and boy he’s excited about it. Lennox expresses his displeasure about that by making lots of faces and chewing on his pen, which everyone ignores. Evil Lisa comes in to hand Noah a note. Evil Lisa looks like she could be part of some weird invasion, so it’s probably good that Assad is dead, because he might have recognized her as an alien, since he had previous experience with that sort of thing. Anyway, the note says that Sandra’s about to wake up Wayne. Noah points at the note and says, “This is Karen Hayes”. Evil Lisa says, no, that’s a piece of paper. Noah calls the doctor.
8:18 pm – In Wayne’s room, the doctor gives Sandra and Karen the big news: Wayne’s condition is completely unchanged. The doctor takes a call from Noah. Noah’s gone completely paranoid and accuses the doctor of being in on “the plot” to subvert his policies. The doctor says that with all due respect, there hasn’t been a coherent plot for many hours now, and he doesn’t see that changing any time soon. …
8:42 pm – Back at Wayne manor, Karen found the time to go get a half double decaffeinated half-caf with a twist of lemon for herself and Sandra. Sandra says she doesn’t like waiting, but recognizes that a lot of exciting stuff happens near the top of the hour, so she says she’ll have to wait. Sandra says that David Palmer had the patience of Job, and Karen tells her that she didn’t realize Job was a doctor. Sandra says, “Patience, not patients!”, but Karen ignores this when the doctor comes in. The doctor says that there has been some intracranial swelling, and if this continues, Wayne will get brain damage, and become a writer for “The Simple Life”. Sandra decides to take a chance and tells him that they need to wait, to see if they can keep Noah from carrying out his evil plan. In some impeccable timing, Wayne makes his machine go ping, which causes the doctor and nursing staff start looking around for some junior mints to see if that will help. One of the nurses makes a phone call to get a team of doctors into Wayne’s room, because they’re occupied with other REALLY important patients elsewhere. …
8:54 pm – Jack asks Gredenko, “Do you know who I am?” Gredenko tells Jack that he knows all about him, because they get “24” in Russia too, only there it’s called “Man Who Will Shoot You in the Thigh”. Jack threatens to do some nasty interrogating and then send Gredenko back to Russia, so Gredenko readily admits where the next target is. In return, he wants amnesty, a promise he won’t be sent back to Russia, and guarantee that Sanjaya will be off American Idol this week.
Hehe.
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Categories: 24
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March 28th, 2007 at 1:51:44 pm
Brendan, you’re not missing the story on NDLS’s precipitous drop in the rankings, are you? From 22 to 28.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:52:07 pm
Dean O’Hara will resign Friday, just so you know.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:54:48 pm
Is this corroborated?
March 28th, 2007 at 2:38:27 pm
One of many links to the new rankings (the rankings officially come out Friday but have been leaked):
http://volokh.com/posts/1175026740.shtml
March 28th, 2007 at 2:43:31 pm
the rankings officially come out Friday
Okay, so now I get a little birdie’s comment, which I now presume is a joke.
March 28th, 2007 at 2:54:34 pm
I figure we’re not fortunate enough for it to be true, but I didn’t take the Friday reference to be a deliberate nod to the “joke”ness of a little birdie’s comment.
Frankly I doubt there any such plans in the works, but there should be. Not because the rankings drop is bad in and of itself (the rankings are objectively meaningless), but because of the unquestionable administrative mismanagement that led to the drop (firing an admissions director midway through a cycle which leads to a 33% increase in acceptance rate; continued incompetence and/or understaffing in CSO leading to abysmal performance and/or data reporting) and the subsequent reputational damage that is certain to occur.
March 28th, 2007 at 3:26:53 pm
also ND’s avg starting salary has dropped below $100k according to the CSO website
March 28th, 2007 at 3:44:21 pm
Actually, ND’s average starting salary was the same last year (2006 and 2005 were both $97,500 for private salaries). And that statistic is extremely misleading, because it’s self-reporting, where only 88 of the graduating class gave salary information.
The more shocking statistics are the following.
First, in 2005, for 3507 applications, the school admitted 638, an 18% acceptance rate. In 2006, for 3502 applications, the school admitted 853, a shockingly high 24% acceptance rate. And then we wonder why we have the largest 1L class in recent memory, coupled with an inordinate number of paid deferrals.
Second, the employment at graduation rate for 2005 grads was a reported 78.8%, plummeting from 2004’s 86.7%, which suggests that either CSO wasn’t getting numbers or wasn’t finding folks jobs. Add that to the employment at 9 months statistic of 94.8% for 2005 grads, down from 98.3% for 2004, which means about 10 kids are wandering around a full 9 months after graduation without a job or not telling Career Services what they’re doing.
Third, while ND’s prestige among lawyers and judges continues to rise (from 2.7 to 3.8), its peer prestige remains a stagnant (and unjustifiably low) 3.3, despite numerous young faculty additions that are often the envy of other schools. Apparently, not enough work is being done from the higher-ups to ensure that the accomplishments of these faculty members are being highlighted to ND’s peers.
Finally, Notre Dame has not dropped this low (28) in the rankings since 1995.
March 28th, 2007 at 4:37:45 pm
The Dean will keep limping around until she can claim credit for the completed Law Building. A more accomplished scholar or fundraiser from a non-hick peer law school is sorely needed to make the school more national and excellent and less good-for-Indiana.