A professor at [Turkey’s] Antalya Akdeniz University was fined 100 Turkish Liras yesterday by the university for whistling a traditional folk song in the faculty corridors.
Professor Orhan Kuruüzüm, an academic in the management and economics faculty, was accused of “whistling in the corridor while holding a tea glass” and “continuing to whistle until he entered his room” earlier this month. The deputy dean of the faculty, Professor Şafak Aksoy, filed the complaint. A professor from the agriculture faculty assessed the complaint and suggested a “warning” as a punishment for Kuruüzüm’s conduct.
The dean of the faculty of management and economics, Professor İsrafil Kurtcephe, argued the punishment was too light for the act, increasing to a fine of 100 Turkish liras.
Kuruüzüm’s lawyer Mustafa Necati Şahiner said his client faced persecution by the faculty, arguing that the faculty management’s aim was to create the environment where they could fire him. The fine is the fourth such punishment the 15-year academic has faced since Professor İsrafil Kurtcephe took over as the dean of the faculty in November. The first inquiry focused on claims that Kuruüzüm had called Kurtcephe “worthless” and “appointed from the top.”
In addition to the whistling charge, Kuruüzüm has been accused of “untoward acts in the faculty building and at official meetings,” “defiance” and “failure to respond to questions by the deputy dean.” When the inquiry faced by Kuruüzüm first made the headlines earlier this month, many in the province of Bolu were offended because the folk song whistled by the professor originated from there. The tune Kuruüzüm whistled was a traditional song called “Halimem.” Güllü Yaman, the branch chief of the Bolu Education Personnel Union, or Eğitim-Sen, at the time condemned the inquiry against Kuruüzüm, calling it “politically motivated.” Kuruüzüm has appealed against the previous three penalties at local courts and is expected to do the same again.
From the Columbus Ohio Dispatch.
A seemingly routine request by Miami University to purchase $167,000 worth of office chairs turned into a spirited exchange yesterday that ended with a rare rejection by the state Controlling Board, a legislative spending oversight panel.
In a bipartisan 6-1 vote, lawmakers slammed the door after realizing that Miami officials decided to purchase the most expensive office chairs available — the Aeron stretched-fabric brand. Of the 333 chairs purchased, 245 of them designated for staff and faculty offices cost $522 apiece. Chairs for conference rooms ranged from $397 to $446 each.
As members including Sen. Ray Miller, D-Columbus, grilled university architect Robert Keller about the purchase, lawmakers said they were not satisfied with the responses.
“They didn’t give a solid explanation as to why” they purchased the most expensive chairs, said Sen. Mark Wagoner, R-Toledo. “In a difficult financial environment, we have to be fiscally responsible.”
APG Office Furnishings of Cincinnati is providing the chairs and gave the university three options for chair styles. Two other options offered staff and faculty office chairs for $458 and $365.
Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, voted to reject the request but first reminded his colleagues that they were sitting in $2,000 high-back leather chairs.
… Dove — a bird all over Key West, and currently sitting in my terminalia catappa — is exactly the hoo – HOOO – hoo Mick Jagger does toward the end of Sympathy for the Devil (the hoos start after he takes off his shirt).
Hoo HOOO Hoo.
How could this:
sound like this:
…HURTS.
University Diaries has covered chlamydia and colonoscopy poetry contests on this blog; now there’s one for migraines.
MyMigraineConnection.com and Teri Robert, patient advocate and Migraine expert on MyMigraineConnection.com, have kicked off their popular annual “Putting Our Heads Together” Poetry Contest. The contest, in its ninth year, seeks the most creative and influential pieces of poetry on how Migraine disease and/or headache disorders affect each entrant’s life.
… [A scientist who pointed out a conflict of interest at the Journal of the American Medical Association] says he received an angry call from JAMA executive deputy editor Phil Fontanarosa last week, shortly after Leo’s article was published on the BMJ Web site. “He said, ‘Who do you think you are,’ ” says Leo. “He then said, ‘You are banned from JAMA for life. You will be sorry. Your school will be sorry. Your students will be sorry.” Fontanarosa referred a call for comment to a JAMA spokeswoman, who said Leo’s retelling of the conversation was “inaccurate.”
“He did talk to the guy, but he said he didn’t threaten him,” the spokeswoman said. “It was something along the lines of not setting a good example for students. He didn’t say he would be banned. He didn’t think Leo was taking a very good approach by taking this confidential process within JAMA out to media and another medical journal. It’s just not the way things are handled here.”
The call from Fontanarosa was followed up by ones from JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine DeAngelis to Leo’s superiors, Leo says. He said she asked his superiors to get him to retract his article in the BMJ. Leo says he decided to call DeAngelis directly to find out what, in particular, she might be objecting to. He said she was “very upset” but didn’t make specific complaints about the article.
In a conversation with us, DeAngelis was none too happy to be questioned about the dust-up with Leo.
“This guy is a nobody and a nothing” she said of Leo. “He is trying to make a name for himself. Please call me about something important.” She added that Leo “should be spending time with his students instead of doing this.”
When asked if she called his superiors and what she said to them, DeAngelis said “it is none of your business.” She added that she did not threaten Leo or anyone at the school.
**************************************
The lady who’s editing JAMA
Is one hell of a big red hot mama.
Fontanarosa?
He’s Mafiosa.
DeAngelis looks like Osama.
New York Times.
… For universities, business education is a kind of cash cow. Business schools are less expensive to operate than graduate schools with elaborate labs and research facilities, and alumni tend to be generous with donations.
Business education is big business, too. Some 146,000 graduate degrees in business were awarded in 2005-06, roughly one-fourth of the 594,000 graduate degrees awarded that school year, according to the Education Department.
Still, there have been signs that all is not well in business education. A study of cheating among graduate students, published in 2006 in the journal Academy of Management Learning & Education, found that 56 percent of all M.B.A. students cheated regularly — more than in any other discipline…
More mumbling about trying to make MBA spell ETHICAL.
The State University of New York melted down a 900-pound butter sculpture from the state fair last summer to help power its vehicles.
The dean of the Kent State University Stark Campus, who resigned abruptly last week, did so after being stopped by security while spray-painting a parking sign on neighboring Stark State College of Technology’s campus.
The incident prompted a police report, but no charges have been filed.
Betsy Boze in an interview today said she “was simply correcting an error on the sign.”
Spray-paint was used to deface two signs on Stark State’s campus, according to police. Boze said the spray-paint was “not graffiti.
“But it was simply removing an arrow pointing to the parking lot that was incorrect and correcting it,” she said.
Boze declined to elaborate when pressed with more questions.
“I want to give you more, but I can’t,” she said.
She submitted her resignation Thursday, effective Friday.
Jackson Township Police continue to investigate the incident, which occurred at 11 a.m. Feb. 15. That was a Sunday when regular classes weren’t in session…
Two signs were altered during the incident — one sign on the east-end of the campus, near the main entrance and one on the west end of the campus…
Heidi Ritt, in The Times Delphic:
“A rare sight occurred [at Drake University] around 4 p.m. on Monday afternoon: a herd of 11 deer used the Drake campus as their playground. Apparently, they came from behind Olmsted, through Helmick Commons and across Forest Avenue.
Ed Stang (P2), a resident assistant in Goodwin-Kirk, said he was in the lobby when he saw eight of them running up and hitting the glass windows.
“One little doe hit the plexi-glass window and popped it out enough to squeeze in,” Stang said. “It went sprinting across the lobby and through the first set of doors, which was propped open, and then hit the second set hard enough to get through. She must have nicked herself because you can still see the blood spots where she hit the doors.”
Goodwin-Kirk resident Allison George (AS2) watched the event from her bedroom window on the third floor. “I thought I was hallucinating,” George said. “I screamed for my roommate to come see what was happening.”
The remaining deer that were outside the building ran around in circles in the Goodwin-Kirk courtyard area. A few deer ran up onto the sidewalk that runs the length of the long hall connecting the two sides of the building. Confused by the reflections in the clear plexi-glass windows, eight deer rammed their heads into the second window on the Kirk side, popping it out. Drake Security responded within minutes and called maintenance to begin repair on the window.
Des Moines Animal Control did not respond to the incident because none of the deer were injured. However, a representative did say that, with the recent flooding, a lot of deer have migrated into cities because of depletion of their food sources caused by floods. Additionally, animal control sees deer get into buildings at least once a year.
No students or staff were injured during the incident. The window that was popped out is the only known damage that resulted. The herd traipsed back across campus safely, leaving behind hundreds of footprints, many bewildered students and a buzz of excitement.”
The University of South Florida will pay Dr. Abdul Rao $50,000 in exchange for his resignation, according to a settlement agreement released by the university on Wednesday.
Rao, senior associate vice president for research, was captured on surveillance video last week accompanying another man as they took a graduate student’s bike from a campus loading dock…
[An] acoustics professor, who works at Salford University in Manchester, has a long-running interest in the whoopee cushion and up until recently held the record for having the largest one in the world.
Prof [Trevor] Cox, who designs concert halls, said: “The whoopee cushion has much in common with the human voice and how wind instruments work, so it is a memorable way of portraying some important science.
“This is a great way to contribute to science just by having a laugh.
“For too long, acoustic engineers have concentrate on issues such as neighbour noise and concert hall acoustics; it is about time we got to the bottom of some more important fundamental issues.
“Really what acoustics is about is understanding people’s responses to different sounds so I’ve come up with a website which samples whoopee sounds for people to go on, listen to and rate in order of funniness.
“The idea is to get people thinking about sounds. My theory – although it is unproven at this stage – is that people will laugh the most at something unexpected.
“Like with jokes – it is more funny if people don’t expect the punchline. So the most unexpected noises will probably get the most votes.”
Here’s the website, which UD found pretty disappointing. She only laughed at one, and she laughed only mildly.
In her view, you don’t laugh at the unexpected ones; you laugh at the long, elaborate ones that sound like the person’s giving a speech. The longer, the funnier.
[The Bowling Green University safe sex] carnival wasn’t all fun and games. Safe sex was being promoted in the form of what [an organizer called] “info-tainment.”
One side of the room had a table full of pamphlets pertaining to safe sex, while the other side of the room had the Wall of Knowledge.
The Wall of Knowledge contained information about chlamydia, gonorrhea, genital warts, syphilis and scabies, and also had pictures of what each of the sexually transmitted diseases can do to the body…
Two other [Canadian Madoff investors] were more puzzling – Herb and Ruth Gamberg, a pair of modest, left-leaning professors who came to Halifax in the 1960s and taught at Dalhousie University before they retired.
Mr. Gamberg, 75, is regarded as one of the world’s leading Marxist scholars, according to a documentary about his life under development by Halifax director Walter Forsyth. He grew up in Worcester, Mass., and on his trips home from Brandeis University he would play pickup basketball with his younger friend, Abbie Hoffman, the radical social activist who comprised part of the Chicago Seven. After coming to Canada, he helped establish the Foundation Year Program at King’s College, and became one of the early members of Dalhousie’s sociology department, writing on everything from prison reform to socialism to the history of Nova Scotia’s political left.
Although they are retired, the Gambergs remain politically energized. They added their names to a petition nominating folk singer Pete Seeger for a Nobel Peace Prize, and were among a group of signatories protesting Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama mining project in Chile.
The Gambergs could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Ruth’s work contributes to The Truth About the Cultural Revolution (see footnote 6).
New one on me. Am wondering if it’s a hoax. Think not.
The Princeton Buildering Society (PBS) breaks the rules every time its members meet. Buildering — the act of climbing on structures like buildings, poles and statues — has occurred on Princeton’s campus for decades. Every brick scaled and every tower reached, though, marks a violation of the University’s Environmental Health & Safety guidelines, which state that “the use of University structures for ‘climbing’ is prohibited.”
The practice, however, survives.
Despite the controversy that erupted in 2006 when Public Safety discovered photos of students climbing buildings on the PBS facebook.com group, PBS members continue to attain the highest levels of achievement on campus.
Public Safety reprimanded the members with a warning, PBS member Lisa ’09 said, adding that “they were making sure that we had good protection and were being safe.” All members’ names have been changed to protect them from disciplinary action.
The incident with Public Safety did not deter Princeton builderers, though they now climb primarily at night.
“I think people have done it and will always do it as a measure of excitement,” builderer Greg ’09 said.
Buildering offers students a unique perspective on Princeton’s campus that often goes unperceived, Lisa noted.
“Seeing campus from above can be both exhilarating and clarifying and also fun,” she said. “People don’t tend to look up.”
… “Every building is possible to climb, and it’s definitely more interesting to climb buildings that have cool gargoyles and architecture,” Lisa said. She added that the buildering society was a direct result of the combination of Princeton’s “beautiful Gregorian architecture … and curious, vertically minded people.”
… Buildering experienced a rise in popularity in the United States in the ’70s. Some members of PBS said that the society has been around for much longer than that, perhaps even “since the turn of the century,” Adam said.
Lisa said she did not know when the group was formed, but that she thought “part of the mystique of the group itself” stems from its uncertain origins. “The society is a secret that is kept among students,” she added.
This secrecy might make it difficult for interested students to join PBS, but Lisa said she was confident this obstacle was not insurmountable.
“If people were interested, they would start exploring on campus,” she said. “The society has a way of finding people. At least, that’s what happened to me.”
Daily Princetonian