Something indefinable – a balance of exotic remoteness, cultural marginality, and artistic intellect – beckons many to Key West, where, until recently, the Sunday New York Times often arrived on Monday and local phone numbers contained only five digits.

This begins to get at it…

It’s similar to what I wrote about Bali. Key West isn’t the coldly enigmatic world Elizabeth Bishop describes when she’s in Canada. Up there she shivers on frigid and foggy northern islands whose people live hidden away, and where we can’t see anything. “An ancient chill,” she writes, “is rippling the dark brooks.”

Down here in Key West, where Bishop also lived, the world doesn’t disdain the transient warm fragility of you. It doesn’t dismiss you as a mere human being in the glacial scheme of things.

Because there’s nothing glacial about it. All’s in motion, and all’s clear here: A fresh breeze is rippling the light fronds.

A fully visible world where people are out and about, living their lives in the sun, makes people part of nature, and makes the world, therefore, unenigmatic. In some senses, at least. We are, when we’re here, so obviously part of the scheme of things.

So the latest thing is that students on certain exercise machines at the university gym are generating energy:

The gym at Oregon State University offer elliptical machines for college students to work out on, and the motion they create helps to generate heat energy in the same process.

Oregon State University (OSU) is located in Corvallis, Oregon and has been offering this capturing of energy to any college student wanting to add to the power gathering.

… The hardware used to capture this energy is installed on 22 of the elliptical machines and can save the college about 3,500 kilowatt hours per year. That’s enough power to help support a small energy efficient house.

The hardware is set up so that more machines can be fixed to the power grid in the future and adds to the harvesting of other people’s energy workout. OSU is now known as the college that is turning other people’s workouts into usable energy…

Take it a step further. In hard economic times, offer
students Green Galley Scholarships, in which the
university covers their tuition in exchange for, say,
twenty hours a week on the elliptical.

… a New York Times reporter interviews its latest money manager.

The writer describes a recent bit of history quite unfairly:

[Jack] Meyer racked up a stellar record running [Harvard’s] endowment, putting [its] returns second only to Yale’s. But complaints about the size of managers’ pay packages, relative to the academics’ pay, ultimately prompted Mr. Meyer and many of his acolytes to leave in 2005.

The people who protested the thirty million dollar a year salaries of Meyer and his boys were mainly alumni, not faculty. Their argument was not a comparative but an absolute one. No one human being should take away thirty million dollars a year from a job. The word they used was obscene, not relative.

This was not a pay equity case, with professors lusting after their own thirty million. This was a case of a group of alumni whose protest prevailed (Harvard management salaries have been lowered) as soon as the managers’ tens of millions hit the New York Times. Public outrage sealed the deal.

———————————-

UPDATE: From Forbes.

Meyer built a Wall Street-like trading operation and managed most of HMC’s money in-house. It looked like a giant hedge fund, and it had paychecks to match. A high-level HMC manager would make as much as $35 million in good years. Those sums triggered what became an annual Harvard tradition: first, the disclosure (compelled by tax laws applying to nonprofits) of the HMC bonuses, followed by an outcry led by the late William Strauss and a group of Harvard alumni from his class of 1969.

What a tangled fuckup we weave, when first we practice to make a university a trading operation… Okay, UD‘s going to help Harvard out here.

Here’s what you do. Figure Meyer plus four other guys each took home … let’s low-ball it… twenty million dollars a year. So… 100 million altogether? Figure they did this for five years… Five years of that and you’re talking about a serious rainy-day fund.

So what you do is ask these people to return as much of this money as seems to them appropriate. No doubt, since they care more about Harvard than personal greed, these people have already approached the university asking what they can do. It’s just a matter of Harvard formalizing the process.

The University of South Florida professor who stepped down from his position earlier this week wants to take back his resignation.

Dr. Abdul Rao, an associate dean and professor at USF’s School of Health, says he was rushed into a resignation after he was caught on tape and admitted to stealing a graduate student’s bicycle.

Rao accepted a 50,000 dollar buy out to resign from his 384,000 dollar per year position.

“Our position is his employment is over,” University Spoke[s]man Michael Hoad said. “And, anything different, his attorney will have to talk to our attorney.”

Professor Rao’s discovering that when you’re a thief — with a YouTube recording the fact, and a court case pending — jobs are scarce.

She teaches only one course a semester at the University of Florida.

In the sort of dinky program that assures small classes.

And she’s complaining.

Because her university wants her to teach two.

UF’s authority to change the agreement under which faculty are hired without their consent was questioned Thursday in a six–hour arbitration hearing.

UF and the faculty member in question each presented evidence concerning the university’s right to adjust her course load without her permission.

When Florence Babb, an endowed professor and graduate coordinator of UF’s Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, received her agreement letter in March 2004 outlining the terms of her hire, it determined she would teach one course per semester and promised her a research assistant.

Endowed faculty are expected to increase the university’s prestige with their contributions and research, and thus they often have lighter teaching loads.

Last March, Babb was informed via a letter from then–interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Joe Glover, that her teaching load would be increased from one course per semester to two courses per semester “because of the state’s fiscal difficulties and the severe budget cuts applied to UF.” Babb said to her knowledge she was the only endowed professor to receive such a letter at that time. She was also relieved of her research assistant. Babb said the lower course load allowed time to conduct research.

She filed a grievance in April 2008 and said that UF violated an agreement it has with the United Faculty of Florida, or UFF, the faculty union…

Icing on the cake: Her grievance will cost the university a lot of money.

Full sun, as usual, and glorious whiteblue sky, and light green water.  But the woman at Fury recommends, “especially because you’ll be here awhile,” that I wait for a less windy day for snorkeling. 

The reefs nearby aren’t any good.  It’s one hour to get to a good one, one hour snorkeling, one hour back to the harbor. 

UD was all packed:  swimsuit, shirt to protect her back, towel, sun cream, book (Key West Tales), writing tablet.   Money.  Allergy pills.  Hat.

“I wouldn’t recommend going out on the water at all today,” said the woman at Fury.  “If you take a glass bottom boat, you’ll definitely get seasick.  Leaning down to look, then sitting up again… Seasickness guaranteed.”

Two massive cruise ships spilled passengers onto the harbor walk. 

“Everybody here?  Anybody been to Key West before?”  A tour guide addressed twenty Asians from Celebrity X Cruises.  “Well, if you’ve been here, you know it’s not Key West.  It’s Key Weird.”

But it wasn’t weird here, country clubby Sunset Harbor, with standard luxury hotels and upscale shops, and even a gated community.

UD‘s always astonished at how illiterate the advertising copy meant to appeal to pretentious people can be.  Note that the short paragraph describing the Truman Annex bursts with blunders. 

Pedestrians are allowed — only between certain hours, to be sure — to walk Truman’s gated ground.

… when you live near the University of Southern Mississippi football team.

Southern Miss’ all-time rushing leader Damion Fletcher was arrested outside the apartment complex that houses the football team late Sunday night on charges of discharging a firearm inside the city limits.

… Malachi Martin, an adjunct professor who lives on nearby Mable Street, said he heard about 15 gunshots late Sunday night. Martin said he looked out his window to see an unidentified male firing four or five rounds from a handgun into the air.

“I was working on a lesson plan when I heard the first few gunshots,” Martin said. “When I looked out the window I saw a guy standing over there holding something up, then I saw flashes and heard shots that coincided with the flashes.

“The police pulled up and talked to me for a minute or so, then they saw someone moving outside the apartments and flipped on their lights and flew into the parking lot.”

A Hattiesburg Police Department release corroborated Martin’s observation, and said that a small-caliber hand gun was found at the scene.

Fletcher was the team’s leading rusher for the 2008 season with 1,313 rushing yards, and his 4,287 total career rushing yards make him Southern Miss’ all-time leader in that category. He was also named Conference USA Offensive Player of the Year following the 2007 season.

… The incident is just the latest of several involving football players that has taken place since the athletic department approved a measure to move the football team to the off-campus apartment complex on 38th Avenue.

In early October, police responded to gunshots and a report of fighting at the complex, but no arrests were made. Two weeks later, a student’s residence across the street from the apartments was burglarized during a Halloween party, and former Southern Miss running back Torris Magee was arrested and charged with burglary after leading police on a foot-chase….

Not really that big a deal. If you’re a USM professor working on a lesson plan after a certain hour during the weekend, you should probably go someplace else, like the library, or a Starbucks.

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.”

… by John Hersey, at Voltaire Books. 

The proprietor was thrilled UD‘s doing a literary tour, and gave her various writers’ addresses, plus some literary gossip. 

“Go to it!”

But if students from another university are within striking range, our students will attack them.

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 laptop thing is heating up at many

campuses.  Each morning, in UD‘s email,

Google News has sent two or three new

opinion pieces, articles, letters, from

either side of the controversy.  It’s not

just occasional professors who ban

anymore – it’s entire schools, like

University of Chicago law.

In most classrooms, laptops, and their BFFs,

cell phones and iPods, are an ongoing debacle.

— Caroline’s — from the web, before I came to Key West. Of all the images of KW cafés I found, this was the most charming.

When you’re sitting at one of its tables, Caroline’s is about frond shadows on green umbrellas, the smell of good hamburgers, a big central bar, and views galore of Duval Street in the midday sun.

I’m eating my asian salad at a spot just across from the Hard Rock Café, a yellow gingerbread building also fronted with green umbrellas. Two glorious palm trees obscure Hard Rock’s second floor balcony.

The fashion of planting a tight line of high palms hard against KW’s flat facades makes the houses coy. They shake their leaf fans seductively, now showing their face, now hiding it.

Two sorts of humanoids walk and bike and moped and electric car about: Locals and tourists.

Locals seem to conceive of KW as what they call, on their house flags, the Conch Republic, and of themselves as (why not?) supremely fortunate citoyens de la République.

Signs of ornery individuality abound as you walk the streets. In front of a typical one and half story white dwelling, a welcome mat says GO AWAY. Another, similar, house advises BE AWARE OF STRANGE DOG. In front of a third house, a flag reads: DON’T TREAD ON ME.

Don’t tread on me also happens to be the motto of Garrett Park, Maryland, UD‘s home town.  She’s not surprised by the coincidence.  Both Garrett Park and Key West are haunts of Paul Fussell’s X’s — brainy non-conformists.  In KW, you see them on their rusty red bicycles, front baskets stuffed with books and bread, and no helmet on the rider’s head.  Slender, somewhere in his fifties, the KW X wears a tight save-the-reefs t-shirt, loose faded shorts, and sandals.  He has a ponytail and facial hair and his skin is pleasantly weathered from sun and booze.

He exhibits a studied – long-studied – tolerance of the tourists.  Although he finds them deeply uninteresting, he will give them directions,  and he will gently get out of their way when they blunder into his bicycle lane.

The Rutgers animal practicum.