This is the week when several of my students will hear from their first choice colleges that they applied to as “Early Decision,” and several of them are so nervous. Good luck to all of them!

The Newark Star-Ledger is a mediocre paper which ignores intellectual pursuits in favor of their obsessional support of sports, especially Rutgers’ football team. They do have one good weekly feature though, a discussion on current issues between two former governors of New Jersey: Republican Tom Kean and Democrat Brendan Byrne. The two former governors invariably stick by their parties, so Kean has never said anything bad about George W. Bush, and he supported John McCain for president, while Byrne is just as adamant about supporting Democrats. They do agree occasionally though, such as in this Monday’s column when they both praised Barack Obama for his cabinet appointees so far. In fact, Kean even said, “It’s good to see that brains are back again.” If that was not a subtle attack on Bush, what else could it possibly have meant? I’ve never understood how Kean has managed to bite his tongue for so long on attacks against Bush, especially since he co-chaired the committee which investigated the government’s response to the attack on the Twin Towers which mostly thrashed the government’s response to it.

Ironically, Both Kean and Byrne agreed that Congress should not give the Big Three automakers a buyout. That is very interesting, since I have been undecided about it previously.

All right, this is positively the finish: 25 books bought in 2008, bringing my total of unread books up to – are you ready for this? – 254 books! *madonna mia* Even though that represents less than 2% of my total books, it is still a huge number of books. If I do not buy another new book for 10 years, I might finally catch up on all those books!