From The Independent:

He is a Turner-prize winning artist who has represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and made an award-winning film capturing the athletic beauty and grace of the French footballer, Zinedine Zidane.

Celebrated as a former YBA and seminal figure on the international arts scene, one might assume that Douglas Gordon’s artworks would be revered in his Scottish homeland.

Not so, according to Gordon, who has vowed never again to accept a public commission in Scotland after a particularly unpleasant experience in which his proposed artwork was heavily criticised and he was left to cover his own expenses.

The University of Edinburgh invited the artist – whose work has been shown and bought by the National Galleries of Scotland – to create a work for its Main Library. It was due to be unveiled in the autumn this year, when the library’s redeveloped ground opened.

Instead, the artist pulled out of the project in disgust after his first proposal for the space was frowned upon for not being positive enough. Later, he was informed that he would have to cover travel and accommodation expenses to the launch of the project.

Gordon, who is represented by the powerful Gagosian Gallery, said he felt “humiliated” and that he would “never again accept a public commission in my home country”.

“I felt I was being treated like a 16-year-old apprentice and not a professional,” he added.

He took the bold step to speak out about his grievance after saying that he was not the first artist to be handled so shabbily by institutions commissioning public artworks. “Many artists are treated disrespectfully by the institutions they are making commissions for,” he said. “Most think they cannot afford to say no, but I can, so I had to.”

His initial idea was to inscribe the words, “Every time you turn a page, it dies a little” in gold letters on a wall inside the library. But several members of the advisory board took against it for being too negative when he handed in his sketches early this year….

From the Chicago Trib:

The Mortuary Science program at Wayne State University is opening its doors to the public, offering a look at how people are autopsied, embalmed and buried.

The program holds its annual open house from 6-9 p.m. Thursday. It’s a tradition that began in 1991 and drew 900 people last year.

This year’s event includes a chance to see a bomb response unit of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and a display on celebrity funerals and the history of burial customs.

The university says visitors also can tour “embalming, anatomy restorative arts and microbiology laboratories.”

One area displays caskets, burns, vaults and other funeral accessories.

A Blacksburg orthopedic surgeon who serves as Virginia Tech’s team physician was charged yesterday with felony property damage. Blacksburg police Lt. Joe Davis said Marc Siegel, 56, was released on $5,000 bond.

Davis said police were called to Montgomery Regional Hospital on Oct. 7 to investigate damage to a vehicle in the physicians’ parking lot. Police determined that a staff member had damaged a colleague’s vehicle.

Siegel has served as Tech’s team surgeon since 1997.

AP

Sprinkled. Scathing Online Schoolmarm says this is interesting writing. Not sure I would have chosen sprinkled.

Fairy dust is sprinkled. Refreshing spring rains are sprinkled. Little dead squirrel bodies are… what? Lying around campus? Popping up around campus?… Nah…

But anyway. San Jose State University has a problem:

In the past, San Jose State University had a humane way to deal with pesky squirrels—they trapped and released them, according to Pat Lopes Harris, SJSU’s director of media relations. However, budget cuts recently forced the school to turn to more lethal methods when they no longer had the staff to check the traps. The result? Corpses strewn around the campus. [Strewn is just right. Did the writer use sprinkle because she’d already used strewn?] That practice is about to come to an end. After years of routinely poisoning their population of bushy-tailed tree- and burrow-dwellers, the school administration is reportedly “looking into” humane alternatives to industrial strength rat poison as a form of squirrel population control. The campus has had a rampant ground-squirrel infestation for years now, with the little guys chewing away at landscaping and upturning lawns and building foundations. Since the grounds crew began baiting their fluffy nemeses in 2007 [Fluffy nemeses is wild.], it has become a common sight to see little dead squirrel bodies sprinkled around campus in the morning. According to the Spartan Daily, the SJSU student newspaper, the choice method of termination is currently anticoagulants, which “essentially cause the animal victim to bleed to death throughout a period of a few days to a week.” Dead or dying rodents flailing on the ground then become prey for predators like falcons and hawks, which in turn get poisoned.

In the immortal words of UD‘s own fluffy nemesis, La Kid: Yuck.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

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‘It was the tidiest exorcism on record — completed in minutes and absent the pungent mess typically associated with demonic possession.

While most everyone at Berry College, located just north of Rome, doubts junior Nathan Mallory’s claim that he cast the devil out of a former student, the alleged exorcism has reignited a festering debate about religion’s role at the liberal arts institution. [How do you reignite something that’s festering?]

“There is a concern that something like this could go on here,” said junior Kyler Post, managing editor of the Campus Carrier, Berry’s student newspaper. “People are afraid we’re going to be looked at as some sort of radical, right-wing school.”

At the heart of this debate is the school’s unabashedly Christian WinShape program, bankrolled by Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy. Mallory is among the 100-plus Berry students to receive a WinShape scholarship.

“The WinShape students live together, worship together, study together,” said Berry religion professor Harvey Hill. They pledge to abstain from alcohol and drugs and must attend weekly chapel meetings at facilities located about three miles from the main campus.

That’s where the alleged exorcism occurred, on Sept. 24, in Mallory’s Pilgrim Hall dorm room. School officials have not released the name of the young woman Mallory claims was demonically possessed.

“While we were worshipping, she began to repeat ‘no, no, no’ just like the other demon-possessed cases I’ve seen in the past,” Mallory wrote in an e-mail to WinShape students. “That’s when [the demon] showed itself.”

“Her face changed right in front of me and the most evil, hideous grin came on her face and her eyes seemed to turn red and I prayed that the Holy Spirit would just take over from there and he did,” wrote Mallory. The student did not return calls seeking comment.

Berry officials have been quick to distance the college from the exorcism, removing Mallory from his job as a resident assistant.

… Boasting eight deer for every student, the private liberal arts college, founded in 1902 as a Protestant institution, sits on a bucolic 26,000 acres. Roughly 1,800 students attend Berry.’

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26,000 acres for 1,800 students! A 1:8 student/deer ratio! An exorcism if you say NO three times! Whadda place.

Florida’s universities never disappoint. This blog would be a bore without the bizarre stories coming out of the sunshine state almost on a daily basis.

Here’s one, from the University of South Florida, a goldmine of the grotesque.

USF Health officials are reviewing the actions of a University doctor who withheld evidence from authorities in a murder investigation, said USF Health spokeswoman Anne DeLotto Baier.

Dr. David Ciesla, associate professor of surgery and director of the trauma/critical care division for the USF medical school, kept a bullet he discovered while performing surgery April 21 on murder suspect Thomas Ford McCoy, Jr.

Ciesla, who is still a USF employee, was sentenced to two years’ probation and 100 community service hours Aug. 17.

… Dr. Sergio Alvarez, a second-year plastic surgery resident at USF, assisted Ciesla while he performed surgery on McCoy, who was shot by a deputy U.S. marshal.

Alvarez said in an interview with Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) agents that Ciesla saw the bullet near the liver during the operation and said, “There it is.”

After Alvarez spotted the bullet and agreed, Ciesla said, “No, it’s not.”

Alvarez said Ciesla took his eyes off the patient, looked at him, and said, “You didn’t see a bullet.”

Alvarez told the FDLE agents he did not continue the conversation, but had his eyes on Ciesla during the entire surgery because he was “a little taken by the whole incident.”

As Ciesla was preparing to leave the operating table, Ciesla said, “Oh, I almost forgot. This is what we do with bullets.”

Ciesla reached his hand into the patient’s abdomen and withdrew the bullet, Alvarez said to the FDLE.

“I saw him push the (bullet) into the palm of his right hand,” Alvarez said. “I saw him place what he had in his right hand into his right pocket.”

After the surgery, Ciesla told agents who had been assigned to collect evidence in the operating room that he did not remove a bullet from McCoy during surgery, according to FDLE reports.

“There were two (agents) in the operating room and one outside the door,” said Susan Shaffi, a third-year surgery resident at the time who also assisted Ciesla the day of the incident.

Shaffi said to FDLE agents that she heard Ciesla tell agents after the surgery, “They’re in the liver. We don’t go after bullets in the liver.”…

He’s his department’s representative to the USF faculty council…. UD likes to think of him giving updates to the assembly while rattling all the bullets in his labcoat …

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Update: More on pockets.

As pressure mounted during the summer from an all-consuming admissions scandal, University of Illinois President B. Joseph White carried in his pocket a motivational card reminding him to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

White has resigned.

For years, [Charlie] Leitch has made it his morning duty to leave piles of unsalted Hoody’s peanuts at the bottom of the trees outside Corbin Hall [at the University of Montana] to feed the 12 to 16 squirrels that inhabit them. But starting last week, most of the peanuts have gone uneaten.

On Thursday morning, he only saw about four squirrels, but they weren’t regulars. They acted like they barely knew him.

“Normally I show up in the morning and, literally, there will be eight squirrels at my feet wanting peanuts,” Leitch said. “They started disappearing about the time school started, and … I showed up on Tuesday and I put out peanuts and they just didn’t come.”

Leitch has worked on campus for nearly 23 years and, while his job as an accountant for the Rural Institute has made him adept at keeping track of hundreds of thousands of dollars of grant money and following paper trails, he is at a loss to find the majority of his long-tailed charges.

“I don’t know [what happened to the squirrels], but it’s got me worried to see that many disappear, because normally at this time … not only would they be swarming on that side of the building, they would be swarming on this side of the building, too, and there aren’t any,” he said. …

Details.

UD thanks Brad.

From the AP:

University at Buffalo student Brian Borncamp won’t be roughing it this semester.

The philosophy and computer science major had been building a cabin in the woods on the western New York campus.

He said he couldn’t afford tuition and rent. But UB administrators gave the cabin idea an “F.”

He was almost finished when campus officials told him he had to clear out this week.

The university says Borncamp has now accepted an offer of more conventional temporary housing.

Patrick Walker, a recent graduate of Lakewood High School near Grand Rapids, Michigan recently unearthed a 10-pound mammoth tooth on the golf course where he works as groundskeeper. He credits paying attention in science classes for not backing down when his boss initially dismissed his find.

“Mr. (Douglas) Schmuck always told us to keep your eyes open, you never know what you’ll find,” Walker told The Grand Rapids Press. “He’s into archeology and taught us about that kind of good stuff.”…

Its campus bat house has collapsed under the weight of its own urine, and now thousands of bats are flying about everywhere. Those that died in the collapse are being eaten by hawks.

Yummy! And just in time for new student week.

From today’s The Tennessean:

A new study just released by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy shows 90% of bank notes from 18 cities have traces of cocaine on them.

DC topped the list of cities where the testing took place with ninety five percent of the sampled bills testing positive. The study indicates a 20% rise in the amount of cocaine on DC’s money over the past two years.

… Chemists at George Washington University confirm the accuracy of the test results, indicating the highest cocaine levels were detected on five, ten and twenty dollar bills.

Doctor Akos Vertes and his assistant Peter Nemes tested bills Monday evening using a technique recently discovered at Purdue University, “We apply high voltage. This high voltage drives the liquid to the tip of the paper… this gives off ions and these ions are characteristic of the chemicals that were on the paper.”

Former Mayor Marion Barry has a theory on why more cocaine is on DC money these days, “From what I can gather from the study, Washington is no different than other large cities but it means a shift in drug use.”

Barry thinks tough times might be driving cocaine use but others say it could be the result of contaminated bills mixing with regular currency inside ATMs.

UD‘s head is spinning. Help her out on this one.

No problem with her colleagues in Chemistry zapping coked up Jacksons. Someone’s gotta do it, and the English department lacks the lab and expertise. Plus it’s always interesting, as on annual Share Your Research Day, to find out what other professors are doing.

But Marion Barry? Has he really gone from the nation’s most notorious crack user to someone who gathers this and gathers that about our drug problem?

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Update: Apparently Barry has. Vertes reproduces the local news segment about his cocaine work.

From a memo to the American University community from Facilities Management:

… The Army Corps of Engineers [is trying to] remove World War I era debris from areas around the AU campus… [The debris] resulted from the US Army Chemical and Weapons testing in this region from 1917 to 1918.

… [We have] confirmed the presence of mustard agent [near the president’s house]… A guard has been stationed at the site 24 hours a day…

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UD thanks Mary Anne.

… the last one hundred percent political dictatorship of Europe,” said Mr UD when I read him an article my sister just sent me about Belarus. “By comparison, Russia is a great democracy.”

In 1993, in Diatlovo, he visited The Museum of Peoples’ Glory (or something like that; Mr. UD forgets), though his main purpose was to visit significant Soltan family sites. “The woman at the museum was absolutely shocked that someone showed up wanting to see it.”

I suppose when you hold on to icons of Soviet glory past their expiration date, this sort of thing will happen:

A massive statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin collapsed on a man who was hanging from it Monday, killing him on the spot, authorities said.

The 21-year-old man was drunk when he climbed onto the five-meter (16-foot)-high plaster monument and hung from its arm, the Emergency Situations ministry said. It then broke into pieces and he was crushed.

The statue in the southeastern Belarus town of Uvarovichi was built in 1939…

Customers [at a Berlin brothel] who arrive on bicycle or who can prove they took public transportation get a 5-euro ($7) discount from the usual 70-euro ($100) fee for 45 minute sessions.

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UD thanks her sister for the link.