UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE SIX
JANUARY 21, 1947
Kansan Comments
Two-Wav Tests
Harassed students getting down to the serious business of preparing for final week may be consoled by what one professor has to say about examinations.
"We teachers may not admit it," he observes, "but an examination is a test of ourselves as well as of the students."
In some courses the examination seems to be a guessing game, with the teacher trying to ask questions which students will not be able to answer. A few (too few) professors mention in connection with some point that it is important enough to be asked in a quiz; and as a result students remember basic ideas in those courses long after they have forgotten the myriad details they crammed for another.
He meant, of course, that quizzes show the teacher how well he has gotten essential material across to his pupils. And whether students come to college for fun or knowledge, their judgment of this matter is about the same. They all prefer a "snap" to a harsh grading curve if the subject is dull, unorganized, and impractical, but they have little respect for the professor regardless of his grading system.
--years, has gained a virtual monopoly of the newspaper business in Kansas City, Mo. Its high rate of circulation to population is equalled by few, if any, other newspapers. A few other newspapers are published in the city, but they are small and cater to various districts of the city, not to the entire city.
This is equally true of courses which aim at student interpretation and conclusion and of those based on memorization of facts.
Some professors habitually ask students to evaluate the course as part of the final examination, and do not let criticisms influence the grade. This sounds like an inspiration to broad, constructive thinking on the part of students, as well as a help for the teacher to do a more effective job.A.B.
Monopoly
Since Friday morning, the 19th largest city in the United States has been without a daily newspaper because of a dispute involving some carriers who claim they're employees of the Kansas City Star and who the Star claims aren't employers.
A picket line was thrown around the Star building by these carriers, and this line has not been crossed by the printers and stereotypers and pressmen who, though not belonging to the same union, are not going to be accused of strike-breaking. As a result, the Star and its morning edition, the Times, hasn't been printed.
The Star, over a long period of
The University Daily Kansan
Student Newspaper of the UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Member of the Kansas Press Assn. Nationa Editor of the Kansas Press Assn. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by the National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10017.
Managing Editor... Charles Room
Asst. Management Editor... Jane Anderson
Makeup Editor... Billie Marie Hamilton
Business Manager... Bill Donovian
Advertising Manager... Margery Handy
Circulation Manager... John McCormick
Accounting Manager... Marcia Stewart
Assist Telegraph Ed... Marcela Stewart
City Editor... R. T. Kingman
As a result, the Kansas Citian has become used to getting his knowledge of local, state, national, and international events mainly from the Star. But Friday afternoon, this was all changed. Only those who have access to papers from other cities learn much about what is going on in the world. The Star's radio station has increased its number of newscasts in an attempt to furnish information, but there is no way to select what you read when someone else reads it to you.
A tale is told about the Star's strength in Kansas City. A newspaper publisher came to town to see what chance he had of starting an opposition paper. He was taken to the Star's business offices and shown the advertising contracts held by the Star. The man, so the story goes, eft by the next train.
Tokyo. (UP) The jeep has undergone such local beauty treatments here that you frequently don't recognize the old girl.
The story may or may not be true, but it would have been a good thing for Kansas Citians had someone succeeded in publishing an opposition paper. A monopoly newspaper is all right as long as it delivers the goods, but there is always a need for two newspapers if one can't deliver.
Jeeps In Japan Get DeLuxe Overhauling
Tokyo now has completely enclosed jeeps, jeeps with two doors that lock, jeeps with glass windows, front side and back, and jeeps with leather-covered springs and sponge-rubber seats. Paint jobs run from conservative black to chrome yellow and robin's egg blue.
With the arrival in Japan of the first dependent family, it was only a matter of time before the dust and rain-conditioned old lady with the agonizing back seat was doomed.
First it was side curtains, fabricated of canvas and celluloid, which kept the rain out. Then duraluminum tops and sides, salvaged from wrecked Japanese aircraft, began to appear.
Minneapolis, (UP)—A maze of tunnels 100 feet below the earth's surface heats buildings at the University of Minnesota. As new buildings are erected, more eight-foot tunnels are dug in the sandstone rocklayers that lie beneath the campus, and carry steam that heats the buildings during Minnesota's cold winters.
In some de luxe models, heaters and radios have been installed. The front seat is usually remodelled to seat three. The back seat gets extra stuffing and a new back. If possible chrome bumpers are added, together with streamlined fender guards and a horn that chimes.
After a jeep is sold at a regular army jeep sale, it is usually driven (or more often pushed) to a Japanese garage, where, for a liberal amount of yen and cigarettes, it gets a complete transformation.
But What's In A Name
Hiawatha, (UP)—Trapp and Kill have entered the implement business in this Kansas town. Virgil Kill has formed a partnership with former Sheriff W. F. Trapp.
Tunnels Heat Minnesota U.
Three-Year-Old Takes Mails Into Own Hands
Willoughby, Ohio. (UP)—Three-year-old Frank Petee only wanted to help the letter carrier, but his efforts caused considerable confusion
Noticing a large bundle of newspapers, magazines and mail left daily at a house on his street. Frank decided to go to work. He loaded the bundle on his tricycle and distributed the mail among residents of the block, but rather indiscriminately. Postmen were kept busy re-collecting the mail and sorting it for final distribution.
Jaytalking ---
If your breakfast table conversation has lost that old snarling and growling, try this statement—scientists say that re-warmed coffee causes hardening of the arteries.
An instructor recently told his students that "the final exam is so difficult that even I can't pass it." He should worry—he doesn't have to.
Comic strips, often prophetic, now have used skywriting in technicolor. By the time science gets around to perfecting the technique, however, their earlier brainchild will have driven us all into atom bomb-proof shelters without a skylight.
General Marshall is certain to be a "middle of the roader" in his job as secretary of state. He started down the middle path by denouncing both sides in China for failure to cooperate.
While "just shopping" the other day, a coed was taken by surprise when she casually asked the salesman for nylons. He had them. Being nearly broke, she managed to wiggle out of the deal by requesting size 12's for her Aunt Angela.
One College senior now takes a dim view of his course in Animals of the Past. He says it's not that he particularly minds seeing pink elephants and flying bats on "party" nights, but when he sees purple dinosaurs and pterodactyls, that's carrying education too far.
There's no need to fret over the alleged Communist influence in labor unions. The union men don't want to do away with the upper class; they just want to be in it.
About That Tax: Pay As You Go, And You Won't Go To Leavenworth
"Pay as you go" sounds like the sign behind the bar in the local beer parlor, but it's the contemporary American income tax plan.
January 15 has come and gone so it's more than fair to warn everyone that they should have filed an income tax return on or before the above date.
This, of course, applies mainly to farmers or share croppers, what ever the case may be. The regulations state if two-thirds of your income is derived from farming then you may file the return on or before Jan. 15, 1947. If *you* make only one-fourth or one-half of your annual income from tilling the soil, then the regulations are not too clear just what you should do. There is a sorry need for rules concerning the "one-halfers" and the "one-fourthers."
In fact, a man might make only one-half of his total income from farming and the rest from boot-legging, then what? He is, of course, left in a quandary.
Income from the G.I. Bill of Rights is not actually income, but a mere "pittance". There are absolutely no regulations regarding "mere pit-tances."
Naturally, through this oversight in "pittance regulations", many "sharpies" have gotten away with murder, not just figuratively speaking. One slot machine owner in Wichita said what he made off his machinaes was a "mere pittence" in comparison to what he could have made if he had just had some quarter machines. (His were the nickle kind). Due to shortages, the quarter one-armed-bandits have been a little late in coming on the market this year.) Don't snicker; the guy owns two Cadillacs and will probably be invited to K.U. to interview February graduates.
Tax computation is really a very simple matter. So called "tax experts" are actually robbing one when money for helping with his tax returns.
According to form 1040, personal income tax form, computation schedule for persons not using the form 1040 tax table is as follows: (If the tax table is crowded, go to the dice table.)
ONE. Enter amount of net income expected in the preceding year and subtract this from line three, page three, plus your wife and three dependents, or any plausible number if any at all.
TWO. Enter exemptions. (Five hundred dollars for yourself; plus $500 for wife or husband; plus $500 for each plausible, if possible.)
THREE. Subtract line two from line one.
FOUR. Use the average tax rates to figure your tentative tax on amount assumed in line three.
FIVE. Subtract line five from line four
Just follow the simple instructions and you can't go wrong. Leavenworth is full of persons who couldn't go wrong.
San Francisco. (UP)—Radar pictures of hurricanes taken from airplanes are now being used by navy weather experts, the 12th naval district revealed.
Although radar shots of storms have been photographed many times aboard ship or from the ground, the naval district said a recent experiment at Miami, Fla., was believed to have been the first successful effort to radar-film a storm from an observation plane.
Radar pulsations were echoed back by water droplets in the air and the echoes formed "characteristic patterns" which could be identified by tranied observers. Shooting a storm with radar from an airplane will broaden weather plotting, the navy asid, since ground or ship radar sets were limited by the optical horizon.
Radar Plane Plots Hurricane Pictures
That Wolfe Call
Hollywood. (UP)—James D. Wolfe, desk officer at the police station here, says he wondered why some women hang up when he answers the phone. Then he discovered he had been announcing, without much pause between the words: "Hollywood—Wolfe!"
There's A Last Straw For That Camel Too
Daniel Bishop in St. Louis Star-Times