David Flory, a Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor, seems also to run a pretty big-time prostitution ring. He calls the activity “a hobby,” but there’s the matter of its illegality. Details of his arrest are here.

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UPDATE:

Three limericks.

This one’s from a UD reader:

In Albuquerque, New Mex,
A professor whose hobby is sex
brought people together,
without asking whether
they’d succeeded in skirting the lex.

This one’s from another UD reader:

A physics professor named Flory
Has a website that’s ever so whore-y
He’s not in it for money
Just loves spreading honey
At least that’s his side of the story.

And one from UD:

We offer the cheap Standard Model:
She’ll coo and she’ll kiss and she’ll coddle.
But those special patrons
With extra-Large Hadrons
Can launch one of our rocket bottles.

From an interview with Julian Young, in Figure/Ground.

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What makes a good teacher today? How do you manage to command attention in an age of interruption characterized by attention deficit and information overflow?

It is very difficult to give a general answer to this question, for teaching, like love, is an intuitive business that cannot properly be articulate[d] in rules and procedures. (That is why one should never go to a ‘teaching-improvement workshop’.) One thing to do is to stop complaining about students. Sure, they suffer from ADD but one needs to get into the habit of liking them, of not regarding them as the enemy, patients, cannon fodder, or a necessary evil. Students tend to respond well to someone they sense wishes them well. Never let students think that your real life is research – work that happens out of the classroom – try to make it the case, so far as possible, that (as in the nineteenth-century) your research and teaching are one and the same. Do not pander too much to the demand for ‘visual aids’. Do not teach in a darkened classroom and, especially, do not structure you[r] lecture around a set of ‘bullet points’ projected onto a screen. Remember that bullet points are discrete while thought is continuous so that what bullet points represent is, in fact, the death of thought…

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UD thanks Dirk for the link.

… has been found dead in her swimming pool.

She is prominently featured on the center’s website.

First the double dipping couple; now this guy (still proudly claimed by his robbee), who seems to have stolen from the school this way and that way and this way and that way. And this way.

Kangari got reimbursed for more than $10,000 worth of trips to Las Vegas and Los Angeles where he and his family visited tourist attractions. The auditor called them “thinly veiled family vacations with no verifiable business purpose.” … “[I]nappropriate purchases” on his P-card [included] nearly $1,000 worth of textbooks, which matched his daughter’s class schedule, sent to him via email. He also bought nearly $4,000 worth of electronics, including a pink iPod Shuffle…. [According to school auditors,] “he was not even present at some of the events for which he requested reimbursement.” At some he said he sent his wife in his place. The audit also said Kangari falsified timesheets for an employee, costing the school an additional $1,800.

Gevalt.

… Temple University, has allegedly spent the last twelve years stealing from a children’s hospital.

… Ghana Juana.

… an American University professor, looked at first like a random act of violence. Now an acquaintance of hers (we don’t yet know how close their friendship was) has been named in the crime. Police aren’t sure where he is, however. Probably Mexico.

Just ten Canadian professors each year win the 3M National Teaching Award. Excerpts from a profile of one of them.

Ryerson University history professor Arne Kislenko … doesn’t use PowerPoint or any other technology. While he makes ample time for students outside the classroom, when lecturing he sees no problem with asserting his expertise over his students. In class, apart from presenting the occasional map, he rarely departs from straightforward lecturing. “Too many bells and whistles takes away from the orator, and I think the professor is the real conduit of knowledge,” he says.

… Kislenko’s lectures are full of emotion—injected with humour, irony, outrage and sadness, depending on the historical period he is discussing…

The Korean university has already had a lot of untimely deaths this year, and now a visiting professor, Christopher Surridge, has died. Only 46 years old, he collapsed at a train station in Korea. Some of his colleagues made a memorial YouTube. Here’s another YouTube – a talk he gave about PLoS-ONE.

… went missing in Liverpool a few days ago. His body has now been found. Police don’t yet know how he died.

… and then sells antiquities in Israel.

The Israeli authorities follow him around. They watch him conduct sales of the stolen goods. His customers are foreigners he meets while acting as a tour guide at ancient sites.

So far so good. So you arrest the guy, tell reporters his name, tell his history department back in the States, and set a trial date.

But no. I guess the law in Israel is that you can’t name the guy – at least until his trial?

So while UD would love to tell you – especially since they stopped him as he was boarding a plane back to the States and found “tens of thousands of dollars” worth of artifacts on him – who this guy is, and… Wait. Boarding a plane?

The professor admitted to the offenses and after posting bail was allowed to leave the country.

So you take the goods back and then let the guy fly to back to the States? What’s that about? Have you even bothered to tell authorities here – or the guy’s university?

If your history professor were an antiquities crook, awaiting trial abroad, wouldn’t you want to know about it?

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Update: Hokay. John Lund, 70 years old, retired lecturer. (Where? I’ll see if I can find out.)

Lund was allowed to leave after posting a $7,500 bond meant to guarantee he will return to stand trial.

Huh? He’ll eat the money and stay home, no? Still don’t understand why Israel let him go.

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Is this the guy? Appears to be a Mormon…?

Dr. Lund retired after teaching for thirty-six years in the CES Institute program.

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Wow. The lands of the Book of Mormon. New one on me. (“See Educator Video.”)

His work is discussed in a recent issue of Mormon Times.

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Got his own website. Does not include in his list of books the one about blacks and the Mormon church.

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Curiouser and curiouser. The story’s growing by leaps and bounds — nobody’s calling this fraud a professor anymore — but Israel’s behavior — letting Lund go not once but twice — remains baffling.

First Release:

Antiquities officials discovered Lund selling artifacts at a lecture he gave in a Jerusalem hotel, [an antiquities security official said]. They seized the items, searched him and his hotel room, where they found hundreds of artifacts…. Because all the items had been recovered and Lund was a tourist, “We thought it was appropriate to let him off with a warning,” [the official] said. “But we kept our eyes open … and sure enough, the guy kept on doing what he was told not to.”

Wha…? Is this Mommy, or is this a fraud unit? First of all, they didn’t recover everything; he was found loaded with goodies at the airport. Second, he’s selling artifacts in the open, while giving a lecture, in a hotel. Brazen theft. Public flaunting and marketing of stolen goods. But – hey – we’re sure we got it all! All of the hundreds of artifacts! And after all the guy’s a tourist. Foreign countries never arrest tourists.

Second Release:

[H]e had stolen ancient coins in his possession and checks totaling more than $20,000 believed to be from the illegal sales of ancient coins, clay oil lamps, and glass and pottery vessels.

Lund was allowed to leave after posting a $7,500 bond meant to guarantee he will return to stand trial.

… is posthumously honored with a molecular bench.

He was witty.

Hippie professor smearing wormshit all over campus.

Background here.

It’s such a gray area. Are you kissing an ass for huge sums of money? Or are you being paid by a government for political and economic advice?

It’s the sort of ambiguity you can’t expect Harvard professors to get anywhere with.

Luckily, there’s the DOJ.

Here’s a guy, James Hood, who taught history at Tulane for decades and decades even though… well… check it out. 1.8 for Clarity… But if Rate My Professors rated lying, he’d for sure get a 5.

He and his wife and kids moved from Louisiana to Minnesota, where they got half a million dollars of state aid because they’d been displaced by Katrina and were impoverished.

Or that’s what they told the state. Actually, Professor Hood and his wife are multimillionaires with extensive property. They’re being investigated for Medical Assistance fraud.

This doesn’t reflect well on Tulane.