US News & World report had rankings for graduate schools in its latest issue. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was listed as number four in the engineering category. MIT, Stanford, and University of California - Berkeley were the top three. Personally, I think that Berkeley is overrated. Undergraduate rankings usually closely follow graduate school rankings. It's nice to see that U of I is still one of the best. Northwestern was also on the list of the top fifty. I don't think that they were in the top 10, though. They may be in the top 10 most expensive.

You know the world is off balance when the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, the tallest basketball player is Chinese, the French call America arrogant, and the Germans don't want to go to war.
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I watched "Married by America" last night. I have definitely been watching too much TV lately. Anyway, neither couple decided to actually get married which was a relief. Although, they didn't sound any more indecisive than a lot of couples. Maybe having the wedding on TV does make people think more about what they are doing. I was a little surprised that they decided to pass up 1/2 million dollars by not tying the knot. There was one woman who did seem genuinely in love, but her mate was not. Frankly, she can do much better, but I'm sure that doesn't lessen the pain of being stood up before her family and friends, not to mention all the TV viewers.
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All of these reality shows remind me of a great book written by Ray Bradbury; Farenheit 451 which I think was written in the 50's. The main theme of the book was that firemen in the future were called to burn books which had been outlawed. Farenheit 451 is the temperature that paper burns. The firemen would race to the scene with kerosene tanks to burn all the books and restore order to the world. For you see, books might make people think, which would lead them to a melancholy life rather than the happiness provided by the "Television Families". As a a sub-theme there was a description of how in the future, people would have giant television screens that would cover the walls of their homes. TV would be interactive and people would be part of the shows that they watched. Much of the programming was reality based since the TV viewer would be part of the action. Sometimes there would be news programs that would follow someone being chased for breaking the law, hiding books in their attics for instance. The TV show would follow the chase until the culprit was caught. The police had a ready list of vagrants and people who liked to walk outside at night. They would sometimes apprehend someone from their list, if they couldn't catch the real criminal. After all, it wouldn't be a tidy conclusion if someone escaped. Guy Montag is one of the firemen. He becomes more and more skeptical of the value of his job. He eventually becomes a criminal by saving books and joins a tribe that memorizes books for use sometime in the future. His wife who has been brainwashed by her TV family is the person who turns him in to authorities. Thankfully, we haven't reached the stage where society has outlawed books, but TV is becoming more and more reality-based. The bad part is that too often that reality is manipulated by the networks to increase ratings. The reality shows are no more real than the situation comedies, hour-long dramas, and game shows that they're replacing. I don't remember who said that TV is a wasteland, but even with over 100 channels it seems to become more so each year.

I watched the Fox Network on Sunday night. The Simpsons is still one of the funniest shows on TV. The other shows that I watched were just weird. Two shows had episodes about the students stealing test answers to win scholastic competions. In each case, the teacher encouraged the students to cheat in order to do well! The message on each show seemed to be that cheating is ok as long as you don't get caught. No wonder so many kids have twisted values. They don't understand that these shows are just comedies and are not meant to be followed. Someday there is going to be an entire generation of children who are completely without ethics or remorse. I wouldn't want to live in that world.
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When I was a freshman in high school, I was faced with a similar situation. Ironically, in World Civilizations class (the study of higher cultures), we were split into discussion groups one day. My group was put in the teacher's office to discuss the topic of the day. The teacher went to the administrative offices for a few minutes and we were left alone. Someone started looking through the teacher's desk and found the answer key to the next test. Four of my classmates copied down all the answers. My friend Guy and I did not. That turned out to be a great decision, because the teacher eventually found out and suspended the four cheats. Guy probably would have lost his dream to attend the Naval Academy at Annapolis if he had followed the crowd. That would have been a huge price to pay for one bad decision. Funny how they don't mention things like that on TV. Probably because it doesn't get a cheap laugh.