October 4th, 2016
Lino Gragila?

Either Lino Graglia is trying to obscure his identity for the purposes of inclusion on this list, or Scholars and Writers for America should hire a copy editor.

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

Another name on the list stirred something in ol’ UD, and then she remembered:

Peter Ferrara, of the Institute for Policy Innovation, acknowledged in …BusinessWeek Online … that he had … taken money from [Jack] Abramoff in exchange for writing certain opinion articles. But Mr. Ferrara did not apologize for doing so. “I do that all the time,” Mr. Ferrara was quoted as saying.

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

Pointy-headed intellectual calls the Scholars and Writers for America list “fairly pathetic.”

But UD, with Ferrara and several others on the list in mind, would say that these people, like their leader, are “enterprising.”

October 3rd, 2016
Spike Smoke

20161003_092056

Early morning smoke curling off
of one of UD‘s fence posts.

Autumn’s finally coming.

October 3rd, 2016
Trump Campaign Enters into …

Strega Nona territory.

Much too much pasta.

October 3rd, 2016
Grownup Endorses Grownup

Despite his history of conflict with her, Michael Chertoff, “the lead Republican lawyer on the Senate committee investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater scandal,” endorses Hillary Clinton:

[Trump’s] decision to spend last week attacking former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado, a woman Trump once called “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping,” proved to the former homeland security secretary that the Manhattan billionaire is too impulsive to be president.

“This issue came up at the debate about Miss Universe,” he said. “Not only did he seem at the debate to lose his temper, but to get up at 3:30 a.m. and reach for your smartphone is to me a hysterical reaction. If you’re president, the button you reach for is not the Twitter button; it’s the nuclear button.”

October 3rd, 2016
With losses like these, they should hire Donald Trump to do their books.

A situation where [Harvard’s] in-house investment managers are getting paid 50 times more than university professors, while delivering lackluster returns, is “politically not feasible,” [one expert] says.

Indeed, the news about Harvard’s endowment [the school just lost two billion dollars] led many to question the university’s approach and its costs. Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan at Flint and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates that Harvard spends at least $70 million on its endowment-management office. That’s almost enough to cover Harvard’s $45,000 tuition for its 1,600 freshmen.

… [I]f Harvard had passively invested in a standard mix of 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds, it would have gotten a higher rate of return — 8.9 percent over the past five years, versus 5.9 percent with its active in-house management …

October 3rd, 2016
“Trump is neither normal nor stable. He is manifestly dangerous to our country and erratic in everything except his unrestrained meanness.”

E.J. Dionne.

October 2nd, 2016
The Last Time Trump Paid Taxes

(Sing it.)

The last time Trump paid taxes
The year was ’95
The OJ Simpson trial began
My students weren’t alive

The last time Trump paid taxes
He paid with all his heart
But then he never paid again
Said he: “That makes me smart.”

Oh the last time Trump paid taxes!
So many years away!
No matter how they change the rules
He’ll never ever pay.

October 1st, 2016
‘Yeah, the idiots LOVE this shit.’

In private conversations this week, Trump’s high command has sought to reassure party figures, including Senate and House leaders, that there is no reason to be alarmed by the debate or by Trump’s ensuing theatrics, explaining them away as part of his appeal to the masses.

September 30th, 2016
One sentence that sums up the spirit of inquiry at the University of Alabama.

What does Tim Williams’ arrest on a misdemeanor gun charge in Tuscaloosa early Thursday morning mean for Alabama at the outside linebacker position?

September 30th, 2016
Wee Small Hours

When the sun is high in the afternoon sky
You can always find rallies to lead
But from dusk till dawn as the clock ticks on
Your poor heart starts to bleed

In the wee small hours of the morning
While the whole wide world has gone to bed
You lie awake and think about the girl
And how the latest polls show she’s ahead

When your bitter heart has learned its lesson
You’ll be Prez! … But she might have you beat…
In the wee small hours of the morning
That’s the time you have to Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet

September 30th, 2016
With Charlie Weis, it’s twice as nice…

… which is why he’s featured so much on this blog. But there’s so much more to say about universities buying out coaches! UD‘s friend Andrew sends her this inspirational account.

September 30th, 2016
Foundations of Western Universities.

The university foundation – the shady organization of rich boosters who want to do nice things for a particular university without having to be bound by the board of trustees and other pesky official organizations/rules – is often a very naughty thing. Sometimes it’s a slush fund for the president and his or her cronies, as at the University of Louisville, where its main function was loading more and more dollars onto the president’s personal haul. God only knows (channeling the Beach Boys) what many campuses’ sports and administration figures would do without The Foundation.

Iowa State University, the inspiration for Jane Smiley’s novel, Moo, has a typical foundation. It buys stuff the administration is too embarrassed, or legally unable, to buy. Until ISU’s president crash-landed one of the planes the foundation bought, no one seems to have been prompted to ask what Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, has asked: “Why does a university need to buy a plane at all?”

In answering that question, UD has always sought the guidance of Purdue University trustee Joanne Brouillette:

Excluding one flight to Naples with several other trustees and administrators, [Purdue University trustee JoAnn] Brouillette’s [twelve private, university-paid] flights [since the beginning of 2008] were to and from Fort Wayne, Ind., only spending 30 minutes in the air. Out of these flights, five of them carried no other passengers.

Big people like go UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN!

*****************
UD thanks dmf.

September 30th, 2016
American Higher Education: The Jaw Chronicles

Almost any serious football school in this country can promise its students a small but significant shot at having their jaw broken by a football player. According to UD‘s rough analysis, one student jaw gets broken by one student athlete approximately once a week somewhere in the US.

This week’s “displaced fracture of the left mandible and a non-displaced fracture of the right mandible” took place at Purdue University, a perennial violent-arrest powerhouse.

September 30th, 2016
“Despite the controversy caused by the protestor’s appearance, his presence did seem to attract a larger crowd, and [one of the organizers] said that his arrival was a good thing. ‘I was going to let him stay as long as he wanted to, because once white people see how [a racist] acts, they can just reflect on that and see, ‘Oh, I’m not like that. Oh, I actually might want to help.’ And they might want to push against what his thoughts and what his beliefs are.”

A racist clown rolls through a small Black Lives Matter rally at East Tennessee State University, and because of the inherent drama of a person with a Confederate flag, hanging rope, gorilla mask, and bananas, he attracts far more attention to the rally than it would have had without him. Not only did the crowd grow; thanks to “fervent Trump supporter” Tristan Rettke, the rally has enjoyed big national coverage for the past few days.

September 28th, 2016
That Y’all and Shut Ma Mouth Land

Last Saturday in [the University of Tennesse’s] Neyland Stadium, former state Rep. Jeremy Durham, R-Franklin … reportedly got into a fracas with a Florida fan during the Vols’ eventual win over the Gators…

[A] particularly boisterous Florida fan was yelling loudly. At one point, Durham responded to the yells. The Florida fan started yelling at Durham. Once the Florida fan yelled at Durham, … Durham turned around and hit the man in the face.

… Durham was ousted from the state legislature earlier this month after accusations of sexual misconduct toward at least 22 women. Saturday, he was ousted from Neyland Stadium by security …

[S]eated next to Durham during the episode was [state Sen. Brian] Kelsey …

Despite Kelsey’s shoulder-to-shoulder proximity to Durham at the time of the exchange, the reported slapping of the Florida fan, and the ejection, Kelsey told The Tennessean [newspaper] he was unaware of anything.

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