Application files are piled high this month in colleges across the country. Admissions officers are poring over essays and recommendation letters, scouring transcripts and standardized test scores.

But something is missing from many applications: a class ranking, once a major component in admissions decisions.

Schools Avoid Class Ranking, Vexing Colleges

Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate leadership, sums up his race for re-election this year with a perverse pride: "The other side of the aisle wants to beat me more than anything you can possibly imagine," he told the Greater Lehigh Valley Auto Dealers Association not long ago.

Mr. Santorum is almost certainly right. No other race in the nation has so focused the Democratic Party's energy, resources or raw hunger to return to power on Capitol Hill. No other race so captures the Republican Party's vulnerabilities this year, with some public opinion polls consistently showing Mr. Santorum trailing his Democratic opponent, State Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.

To Democrats Hungry for Senate, a Pennsylvania Seat Looks Ripe

A 49-year-old man died Friday morning when he stepped into the path of a commuter train at E. Meadow Drive in Palo Alto, according to Caltrain spokesman Jonah Weinberg.

For those of you keeping score at home, for the 2006 season, Caltrain: 3, People: 0.

Pedestrian struck, killed by Caltrain

NASA and its partner agencies have set a new plan to complete the International Space Station (ISS) by 2010, delaying science utilization to make way for 16 shuttle flights to piece together the orbital laboratory.

NASA, Partners Set Space Station Construction Plan

LOL! Read the comic. Then scroll down to Gabe's entry, "It's a good thing I didn't eat lunch."

Penny Arcade! - A Waste Sensation

NASA Voyager Operations Status Report #2006-01-06, Week Ending January 13, 2006

NASA Voyager Operations Status Report #2006-01-06, Week Ending January 13, 2006 | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

The new Dakota anti-abortion legislation is just the new and improved version of the Gay Marriage Amendment used so successfully in the last election by Karl Rove and his henchmen to bring conservative voters to the polls. It is wedge politics at its worst or finest, depending on your point of view. It is designed purely to divide voters, and divert them from their interests.

Bingo.

Is South Dakota Abortion Bill the New Gay Marriage Amendment?

"It's a good term, 'grandfathered,' because those folks were preserved at a wage-and-benefits level that was essentially twice the market," Mr. Glynn said. Already, 50 percent of the upper-tier workers who were around in 2004 have left, through retirement and attrition.

New hires are encouraged to view assembly-line work as short term. The way up from the admittedly meager wage scale is not a better union contract, the message goes, but a promotion — if not within Caterpillar, then at another employer. Driving a forklift or working on an assembly line for 20 years should not be a career goal.

I wonder why labor doesn't try asking for profit sharing instead of wage hikes.

Two Tiers, Slipping Into One

"Well, I can't walk." The patient casually combed her fingers through her long brown hair as she recounted the story to the young doctors in training who surrounded the bed. "Yesterday, I tried to get out of bed and just couldn't. It hurt so much I had to sit back down. That's when I ended up here." The patient, a slender, soft-spoken woman who appeared younger than her 52 years, had dark circles under her tired eyes. Despite her offhand manner, Dr. Jennifer Quinn, a resident in her last year of training, thought the patient's pale complexion and exhausted appearance suggested a longstanding illness.

On Her Last Legs

Back in the days of dial-up modems and transfer speeds measured in hundreds of bits per second, unwanted email messages were actually felt as a significant dent in our personal pocketbooks. As increases in transfer speeds outpaced increases in spam traffic, the hundreds of unwanted emails we received per week became more of a nuisance than a serious financial threat. Today sophisticated spam filters offered by all major email providers keep us from seeing hundreds of unwanted emails on a daily basis, and relatively infrequently allow unwanted messages to reach our coveted Inboxes.

I'd have to think about this a bit but at least he proposes a migration path.

Hypertext Mail Protocol (a.k.a. Stub Email): A Proposal