… of Nelson Algren, at a Chicago event marking his centennial.

The University of South Florida dean who steals bikes has embarrassed his university, of course, and serious punishment makes sense.

But this detail from the story explains why USF did well to fire him.

After Rao learned he was captured on tape on Wednesday, [the bike’s owner, a graduate student] said, Rao called him into his office and pressured him to tell police that the matter was the result of a misunderstanding.

“This (research) is an ethical profession, and Rao is an unethical man,” Boyd said. “I don’t want him in here in my profession. I hope he’s fully investigated, because I would be interested to know what else he’s done.”

The student’s correct. Rao’s behavior throughout suggests a degenerate sense of entitlement.

Edward L. Glaeser, New York Times:

Cracking open the Champagne [UD‘s not much of a drinker] does not exactly feel in tune with today’s spirit of national austerity, but recessions get worse when prosperous people do not spend. In fact, if you can afford it, then this is exactly the moment to redo your kitchen [UD does not cook] or buy a car [UD does not drive]. Not only will you be able to get a good deal, but your spending will help revive the economy. The economist John Maynard Keynes convincingly argued 70 years ago that thrift was no virtue during a recession.

How, UD asked herself, to avoid the vice of thrift?

She could help keep Key West afloat!

So she has rented a palmy apartment here with excellent books in the living room and fine art (the owner’s an artist) in the kitchen. This morning she slept late (7:30) and then lay in bed, sometimes reading, sometimes gazing at the palms swaying outside her bedroom windows.

She blogged a little, and she felt the dark encroachment of that old catastrophe, as a calm darkens among water-lights…

No, no, no. That last bit was Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning. UD felt neither darkness nor encroachment. She felt fortunate, and light in spirit.

She did some writing.

Her breakfast was leftover bread from last night’s dinner at a Duval Street bistro. She dipped the bread in some flavored olive oil she found in a cupboard. Also she had the two weeny biscottis she’d been given on her flight to Fort Lauderdale.

All sinfully thrifty, but this was her first morning on the island, and her old ways lingered.

She fixed things right away this afternoon. She went to Panini Panini and bought THREE salads, each ridiculously expensive, and she’s now having one of them for dinner.

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

For hours she walked through the sunlit streets of Key West. The wind took the edge off the sun and made the palms sway, and the palms made shadows on the white houses.

On Margaret Street (there’s a Margaret Street nearby), a man in painter’s trousers greeted UD. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful!” said UD, and then she wondered whether – since almost every day is beautiful – the greeting Beautiful day isn’t it gets a bit old around these parts. Maybe people eventually say it to one another sardonically, like that character in the film White Mischief – “Oh God not another fucking beautiful day.”

Here was the main cemetery for the island, everyone buried above ground in white body boxes with flowers and photos and dates of birth and death on them. A rooster and his girlfriend poked among the tombs. One of the boxes was a sculpted casket; it was sustained at a strange angle by four gray marble columns underneath it. It sort of looked like a model for an airplane.

Without the wings and shit.

“Ma’am,” said a fellow tourist to UD, who hates being called ma’am. “Do you happen to know where the marker is that says I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK?”

“Is that here? It seems every graveyard claims it, it’s so clever. No, I don’t know where it is.”

Then the guy found it, and he ran and got UD to show her.

Among the hypercharming houses across from the cemetery was one with the same tree that overlooks UD‘s bedroom windows. She wrote about this stunner yesterday; its bright copper leaves have fallen all over her balcony. The house’s owner had nailed a paragraph of description to the tree’s trunk:

TERMINALIA CATAPPA
NATIVE OF SOUTH ASIA
FLESH IS SWEET AND TART

“In Key West,” thought UD, “even botanical markers sound decadent.”

… seems to have learned his trade from the chef in The Dirty Fork Sketch is in trouble.

Having encouraged a student to give a speech on a controversial subject, the professor interrupted the student to inform him that he was a fascist bastard.

Yet more cleverly, the professor refused to give the student a grade, but wrote on his evaluation form

Ask God what your grade is.

Of course the best way to handle this sort of thing is to impose a speech code on the school that says you can’t say anything about anything to anybody.

No. There must be a better way.

The better way to go involves recognizing that the reason this story is ALL over the global media this morning, even though in the scheme of things it doesn’t amount to much, is that a real live professor – embodiment of thoughtful dispassion – flipped his lid. This doesn’t happen – at least on so spectacular and stupid a scale – every day.

Also that this particular lid flipping flips over into the culture wars.

What to do? Punish the professor. If he’s not tenured, you might ask yourself whether a rageful ideologue who attacks students is the sort of person you want modeling rhetorical form. If he’s tenured, he needs at the very least to apologize to the student (assuming accounts of the event are correct) and to the rest of the class.

Aren’t students and faculty at George Mason University angry enough at their president?

But, on the other hand, shouldn’t everyone know the full picture?

… to take off the top of his convertible. UD was wowed by the crowds of immense palm trees on campus.

Like almost every other university, Miami’s starting to have serious money troubles.

… conflict of interest may ensue. When professors are really consultants or salespeople, or when they’re cooling their heels waiting for higher paying work, or … who knows what they’re doing on campus, but when professors aren’t really professors, conflict of interest may ensue.

Here’s an example from George Washington University.

A prominent professor in the GW School of Public Health and Health Sciences is under scrutiny this week because of allegations that he knowingly misled people about the safety of the District’s water while under contract with the city’s main water utility.

Tee Guidotti, a former professor and department chairman at SPHHS, published an article in the National Institute of Health journal in 2007 that said the extraordinarily high lead content in the D.C. water supply from 2001 to 2004 was not harmful, a statement cited locally and nationally as evidence that the city’s water supply was safe.

Last month, however, another study concluded that there is a correlation between elevated blood-lead levels in children and neighborhoods that had high lead levels in drinking water during the city’s water crisis, The Washington Post reported. The study found that hundreds of D.C. children had dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

After closer review, editors of the journal said Guidotti’s conclusions were questionable and that he may have been influenced to publish his conclusions by the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, who contracted the study.

WASA paid Guidotti and GW $750,000 over a three-year period for his work on the study, according to The Washington Post.

On Friday the Post published a front-page story about the alleged conflict of interest, highlighting e-mails Guidotti sent to colleagues prior to the journal’s publication showing he knew a key portion of the article was inaccurate, though it was published anyway…

Here’s the Washington Post story.

[T]here is a way to appease both sides here. Some schools have classrooms where the Internet connection in the entire room can be turned on or off with the flip of a switch. This is a great way to compromise between professors and students. Students can bring their laptops so they can type up notes, but they are unable to get online unless the professor decides it would be beneficial to the class.

A student at UD‘s George Washington University makes a good case against classroom laptops. She offers the above as a solution, but UD could swear she read somewhere (she can’t find it now) that there are many ways for students to disable the off switch.

… writes Richard Wilbur, in one of his best-known poems.

He lives here, on Key West.

UD‘s eyes open to a cry of roosters, a swish of palms, and church bells. A breeze from her screened window, and a ceiling fan, cool her. Water trickles off the hot tub in the pool, and a small jet crosses a sky already bright blue.

What’ s the other animal? Querulous, jabbering.

And another bird, a parrot? Whistling.

The big red heart-shaped leaves from the whatever tree that shades the pool have fallen down. They make scratching sounds on the balcony. A man in a blue bandana stands by the side of the pool scooping out the leaves that fell overnight.

The church bells repeat the two notes that begin Goin’ Home. Go – in’. Go-in.’

After the frenzy of yesterday, the eyes open to a slow consideration of the world we’ve flown ourselves into. Questions of travel? That’s Elizabeth Bishop, another lover of Key West.

What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

It is childishness, the rush to this bright blue miniature world; blue and gold as the sun climbs over the island and lights up the palms. “All your life you’ve been bursting through doors,” said UD‘s sister to her at Mie n Yu two days ago. At this table, in fact.

The white one, in the foreground. “At Suburban, and at Washington Hospital Center, when Mom was sick, you just pushed your way in to see her. People were always shooing you out.”

Pushy. Yes. And here’s another door.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm hates quotation marks. But she knows there are times when you’ve simply got to use them.

Here’s a perfect example, from an article in Forbes giving advice about philanthropy.

Inquire about whether or not there is a conflict of interest policy in place. Is the investment manager on the board of the organization (i.e., Bernard Madoff was on the board of Yeshiva University and “managed” their investments)?

Long, long day. Two hours in the air to Fort Lauderdale; then a drive to Key West with UD‘s friend Kevan, who met her at the airport and took her down there in his blue Honda Del Sol convertible.

The views along the way, of endless green water and vanilla skies with vultures, set the surreal tone for all that UD‘s so far seen in this warm and brilliantly lit place. All the islands in the sea, and all the clouds that swirl around them, make the sort of beauty you have trouble grasping — it’s so out of line with anything else in the world.

UD‘s long day ended at a pier famous for its sunsets. Another species of surreality, the deep pink bands on the horizon, the elegant sailboats purring by, people dancing in the peaceful dusk.

UD leaves very soon for the next leg of her year-long sabbatical from George Washington University: Key West, Florida.

When we last saw her, UD was living in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in an apartment overlooking the Atlantic. Cold winter weather meant the town was largely deserted. She had trouble finding convenience stores whose doors weren’t locked.

But there were quiet cafes, quiet walks along beaches, visits from friends, and long hours for writing and thinking. She loved the sunrises and sunsets and the placid change of skies from morning to noon to night. Cargo ships and contrails reminded her of a world in transit. She herself had gone gloriously aground.

Now she goes to a subtropical island in high season. Although her apartment’s near the quiet end of Duval Street (It’s 2:28 AM and the place is hopping.), she’s about to enter an all-night party. (A pink cab just drifted by the live cam.) Key West is warm and awake and UD‘s ready for that.

A couple of days ago, the New York Times featured a small Key West house and its owner. The article gave UD a sense of daily life there.

For Murphy Davis, getting away means leaving the front door to his Key West cottage open — not just unlocked, but flung wide open. Tropical breezes blow through the house, bearing leaves from sapodilla trees, hibiscus petals, even sand. The presence of these elemental bits of nature is a sign that he is truly at home.

… “One of my favorite things about being in Key West is the physical environment,” said Mr. Davis, seated barefoot in a blue canvas chair on his front porch, a glass of iced tea in hand. “I like the sand on my floor. I don’t understand people who close up their houses and crank up the A.C.”

In these cold winter months, Key West beckons to him. “I have always considered Key West my second home,” said Mr. Davis, 52, who first became enamored of the island as a child.

He vividly recalls a fishing trip with his grandparents when he was 8 years old. “We left freezing Long Island, and in one day it was hot,” Mr. Davis said. “That was magical to me.” Even today he can point out the booth where he sat with them at Pepe’s Cafe, the oldest restaurant on the island. Mr. Davis first bought property here in 1997, with his partner at the time, along with the playwright Terrence McNally; they had identical side-by-side cottages on an idyllic lane

… The cottage, on the corner of two quiet lanes, is enveloped by lush foliage. Its one-and-a-half-story design is typical of the island’s smaller residences, as are the original louvered windows.

… A typical morning begins on the back deck, where Mr. Davis drinks coffee and spends time reading scripts — usually on a futon that has been draped with an Indonesian sarong. “I’m partial to futons because as a young actor I was a futon salesman in New York City,” he said with a laugh.

He gardens, goes to the local movie theater, and mingles with friends who include actors, writers, massage therapists and the park ranger who works at the entrance to the local beach. Cooking for small dinner parties, where guests flow easily through the house, inside and out, is another ritual.

Mr. Davis relishes his time alone here. Long afternoons include trips to the beach, to swim and read. He has no car and says he would not consider owning one. Instead, he prefers to travel by bicycle, in thrall to the sea air, the tropical foliage and multicultural spirit of Key West, a city of 25,000 permanent residents.

His travels by bicycle have brought him closer to the distinctive architecture of the 4.5-mile-long island, particularly the historic district, which contains 3,000 wooden structures, many with two-story porches and Victorian and Queen Anne architecture.

Leaving soon for lunch at a Georgetown restaurant to mark UD‘s sister’s birthday and Valentine’s Day.

The restaurant has veiled tables.

Posting will be rather light today.

See Part I here.

More evidence of Ezra Merkin’s innocence led astray.

One of the top advisers to the money manager J. Ezra Merkin, who invested $2 billion of his clients’ money with Bernard L. Madoff, is a convicted felon who worked for Mr. Merkin while still in federal prison, according to recently filed court documents.

The adviser, Victor Teicher, who had been convicted of federal securities fraud and was barred from the securities industry, advised Mr. Merkin on the management of his Ariel Fund Ltd. through phone calls made to Mr. Merkin’s Park Avenue office from a New Jersey prison.

Information about Mr. Teicher’s relationship with Mr. Merkin was contained in court papers filed by New York University, one of several institutions now suing Mr. Merkin. The university lost $24 million from its investment in the Ariel Fund, which turned over $300 million of its assets to Mr. Madoff, without disclosing the arrangement to Ariel investors.

… In a memorandum filed in New York Supreme Court this week, the university said that none of the Ariel fund prospectuses disclosed that “Victor Teicher, a convicted felon, and his staff were the persons actively managing the majority of the Ariel assets, and that hundreds of millions of dollars of Ariel’s funds had also been delivered for management to Madoff — even though Teicher had warned Merkin than Madoff’s returns were not possible.”

Mr. Teicher began advising Mr. Merkin’s Ariel fund in 1993 after Mr. Teicher had been convicted of several counts of securities fraud, including using insider information in trading puts and calls. Mr. Teicher, according to the filing, advised Mr. Merkin until 2001, during which time New York University increased its Ariel investment.

1993. Began to lose his way sixteen years ago.

Although he earns over $700,000, a dean at the University of South Florida stole a bicycle. 

He was captured on camera doing it.

He’s on leave.

UD thinks you can tell from his photo that he’s trouble.

That’s a USF clip he’s got on, which is already pretty weird.  He’s anxious for you to see his way big gold watch.  Bad sign.  He looks smug.  UD‘s theory is that he thinks he owns the clinic he works in, and all the objects in it.  (He stole the bike from his building.)  If he needs a bike, for instance, and he sees one, it’s his.