The latest from Naperville, where the new superintendent of schools graduated from a now-defunct diploma mill. The search firm that charged the taxpayers of the district for their services describes its methods.

… District 203 school board President Suzyn Price directed questions about Mitrovich to Hank Gmitro, an associate with Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, the search firm the district employed to help it find a new superintendent.

Gmitro said the firm was aware of what school Mitrovich attended and learned during a routine check several days ago that it was not accredited. He was unsure of whether the firm learned before or after the board approved hiring the new leader and said it’s typical to focus discussions with candidates more on their experiences….

Unsure whether they knew before or after the board took their recommendation whether he graduated from a pretend school.

… of making community colleges the playthings of politicians endures.

Politicians direct money to the colleges, and by way of response the colleges create pretend administrative positions for the politicians that pay them a whole lot of money.

The math’s so simple even UD gets it. Northwest Florida State College gets a $35 million appropriation courtesy of a guy named Sansom, the head of the appropriations committee in the Florida House. In exchange, it gives the guy “a part-time position that paid $110,000, and which was never advertised, nor was anyone else interviewed for it.” So little for so much!

Plus there’s the airport thing.

Sansom secured $6 million for a facility at the Destin airport that the college says will be used as an emergency training center. However, it also is virtually identical to something Panhandle developer and Sansom campaign contributor Jay Odom wanted to build on the same spot to shelter his airplanes during hurricanes. It’s interesting that the state denied the city’s request for funding Odom’s project, but the money materialized when it became a Northwest proposal – Sansom tapped a fund designated for capital projects at colleges.

The guy’s a miracle worker, and you’d have to be pretty smart to see the similarities between the two projects, but I guess the reporter for this here paper figured it out.

And then I guess absolute power corrupts absolutely or however that saying goes, because once Sansom got elevated to Speaker of the House, while keeping his thing at Northwest Florida State College, he got a little arrogant.

Maybe he’d been reading about those real exclusive Palm Beach country clubs Bernard Madoff belonged to…. Whatever the reason, he set up a closed meeting with the College’s trustees in Tallahassee, at a private club which, in the epitome of exclusivity for that part of the state, “overlooks the football stadium on the campus of Florida State University.”

But, you know, trustee meetings are supposed to be public.

… Sansom is a member of the club and the event was booked as the ”Sansom dinner,” not under the Northwest Florida State College trustees.

… The latest disclosure casts new light on one of the controversial elements of Sansom’s relationship with the school, which derailed his tenure as House speaker and triggered a grand jury investigation. Sansom also faces review by a House special investigator and the state Commission on Ethics. [Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you that Sansom has left politics because of some sudden legal difficulties.]

Sansom, R-Destin, has previously described his role in the meeting as a mere participant and said, as the only lawmaker there, that the Sunshine Law on open meetings did not apply to him. The college contends it did not break the law, calling the meeting a legislative briefing.

… But Sansom was the only legislator there and last month, the trustees approved a set of minutes created nearly 10 months after the meeting. [Retroactive minutes. Best kind.]

… As a public school, a meeting of the trustees must be open to the public, which requires advertising the time and place so people can attend. The college did provide public notice, with an ad that was published one week before the meeting, in a newspaper in Okaloosa County, 150 miles from where the meeting took place.

That was Richburg’s idea: ”It’s probably the only way we can do it in privacy but with a public notice here,” he wrote in his e-mail to Sansom….

Old UD sometimes finds herself wondering… What would have happened if these guys had been able to get real college educations? Might they have turned out less stupid?

UD thanks Roy for sending along one of the articles.

… Sonata for Cello and Piano, a British scientist announced, a few years ago, a new syndrome called Cello Scrotum, in which the pressing of the instrument against the male instrumentalist promoted scrotal decomposition.

Her work on the condition was written up in a major medical journal, and for years has been cited respectfully.

She has now admitted that it was a hoax.

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Update: Two limericks thus far. The first is by Dave.

“My cello’s degrading my scrotum,”
Said Rostropovich unto his factotum.
“Yo-Yo Ma’s yo-yo
Has withered in toto,
Yet science refuses to note ‘em.”

**********************************

The second is by University Diaries:

Ever since I contracted c. scrotum
My f-hole’s become a mere totem.
Only thing I can play
Is Auber’s Bal Masqué.
I’ll have to begin to regrow them.

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UPDATE: More scrotum-tightening verse.

From Eric:

There once was a cellist named Zack,
Alarmed about losing his sac.
After vigorous chokehold,
He knew he’d been Sokaled,
So spicattoed and bowed his groove back.

*************************

From Dave:

Brahms lost his to a misapplied flute.
Gonorrhea shrank Mahler’s, to boot.
I’m blaming my cello
For the sickly and yellow
State of my forbidden fruit.

*************************

From Melanie:

A scrupulous cellist named Krupp
Bought a rockstop that came with a cup.
When asked, “Why the addition?”
He cited physicians
And said, “So my endpin stays up.”

… UD reads about the latest Ponzi scheme.

She has the following two thoughts:

1.) The swindler called the business Agape World.

How long before the beautiful concept of agape recovers from this?

2.) At least the guy – last name Cosmo, name of business Agape – probably isn’t Jewish.

“The Czech EU presidency on Tuesday cloaked a segment of a controversial art installation in Brussels that portrays Bulgaria as a psychedelic Turkish squat toilet.

Security officials confirmed that the display of Bulgaria was covered up overnight in response to outrage in Sofia over the crude, artistic portrayal.

The eight-ton piece entitled “Entropa” by controversial Czech conceptual artist David Cerny pokes fun at national sore points and stereotypes. The work resembles a plastic scale-model kit of an EU map and was installed at a Brussels building where EU summits take place.

The Czech EU presidency apologized immediately after the initial presentation of the piece to its EU partners on Monday, Jan. 12. Sofia soon after made a formal complaint and demanded the removal of the segment representing Bulgaria.

Slovakia also protested at being depicted as an Hungarian salami but was appeased with an apology.

Cerny, who has made his name through his provocative artworks, had told the Czech government in Prague that “Entropa” would be a collaborative piece by artists representing all 27 member states. He later admitted that he had produced the entire work himself.”

Deutsche Welle

… you’re the only one like you,” sings Barney, and the reassurance extends, surely, to countries. No other place is like Bulgaria, Germany, France … These countries might now be part of the European Union, but they retain their unique national characteristics…

And so the current president of the Union – the Czech Republic – commissioned a Czech sculptor to create for the European Council building in Brussels a vast mosaic celebrating the rich uniqueness of each member country. The sculptor would subcontract, as it were, each country’s part of the mosaic to a sculptor in that country, and the result would be a big colorful celebration of diversity.

… Here is Bulgaria, represented as a series of crude, hole-in-the-floor toilets. Here is the Netherlands, subsumed by floods, with only a few minarets peeping out from the water. Luxembourg is depicted as a tiny lump of gold marked by a “for sale” sign, while five Lithuanian soldiers are apparently urinating on Russia.

France? On strike.

The 172-square-foot, eight-ton installation, titled “Entropa,” consists of a sort of puzzle formed by the geographical shapes of European countries…

[The sculptor] admitted that he and two of his friends constructed the whole thing themselves, making up the names of artists, giving some of them Web sites and writing pretentious, absurd statements to go with their supposed contributions.

For example, next to the piece for Italy — depicted as a huge soccer field with little soccer players on it — it says, “It appears to be an autoerotic system of sensational spectacle with no climax in sight.”

The fake British entry, a kit of Europe in which the piece representing Britain has been taken out, says, “This improvement of exactness means that its individual selective sieve can cover the so-called objective sieve.” [Someone’s been reading Alfred Jarry.]

… The Germans are probably not too thrilled that their country is represented as a series of highways that, looked at a certain way, possibly bring to mind a swastika. Spain has to settle with being a huge construction site, while Romania is shown as a Dracula-themed amusement park…

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Update: Pictures. Plus this, from the Daily Mail: “The eight-tonne mosaic will also go ‘live’ later this week, when certain country ‘pieces’ will start to move and make noises.”

… or not quite a millionaire… But ol’ Roy did do pretty well…

A Houston County [Alabama] educator was overpaid by about $50,000 over a 10-year period based on his questionable doctorate, according to an internal investigation.

Roy Watford, Houston County Schools secondary curriculum/accreditation director, received extra pay for a doctoral degree he held from the University of Beverly Hills, Houston County School Superintendent Tim Pitchford said. The extra pay amounted to about $5,000 more per year between 1994 and 2004 than he should have received.

Educators are paid according to their years of experience and highest degree level obtained. To get credit for the degrees, they must come from a university or college accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. SACS does not recognize the University of Beverly Hills…

A reader sends UD a 1975 Time magazine article which describes the diploma mill the University of Massachusetts education school was in those years.

This is the school from which, during that decade, Bambi Cardenas (background here) earned her Ph.D. The School of Education, noted Time, had “earned a reputation as a diploma mill. In the past three years it granted more than 387 doctoral degrees. Some doctorates were awarded to students who had no undergraduate degrees. The writing in many doctoral theses was barely at high school level.”

No wonder Bambi – president of the University of Texas at Pan American – is now being investigated for having plagiarized her U Mass dissertation in educational leadership.

And… I dunno… Sad, isn’t it? That so many ed schools remain, as the New York Times recently wrote, “little more than diploma mills.”

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The other hoax? The journal Quadrant. Australia.

Keith Windschuttle, its editor, published a science piece that agreed with his global warming skepticism, but he did no checking on its author or its sometimes absurd claims.

… Windschuttle admitted the article was unsolicited and from an unknown author, and that he had failed to even Google the author’s name or check easily validated facts, such as the claim that the paper was first presented at the 19th International Conference on Genome Informatics in Brisbane last year.

A check of the program on the internet by The Australian yesterday revealed there was no such paper or author listed.

Windschuttle said his practices were the same as any editor of a publication and that checking every fact and quotation in an article was impractical.

“I guess I could have done more to investigate the author but the content was something I did investigate because I was interested in some of the sources,” he said.

The latest entry on the hoax blog says: “So neatly did my essay conform with reactionary ideology that Quadrant, it seems, didn’t even check the putative author’s credentials”.

“Nor it seems did they get the piece peer-reviewed. Nor did they check the facts; nor the footnotes. Nor were they alerted by the clues. I’m almost embarrassed for you, Windschuttle. Just look at you above, a pea in a pod alongside those other culture warriors.”

The hoaxer wanted to expose the absurdity of the journal’s views on the environment by writing patently extreme nonsense and watching him print it. A hoax very much like the Sokal hoax.