Half way up my half acre. It stops and looks at me. Like this.
A minute later, it slinks away, farther up the hill.
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Three hours later, I notice a Deer Tourism line of cars in front of my house.
An enormous buck relaxes in my front garden.
I go out and shout at him and he runs away.
As I sit and wait for one of my classes to start, I look around and see 10 kids typing on their laptops, undoubtedly browsing Facebook, while the rest of them race their thumbs, wildly texting their friends and significant others.
No one speaks. The professor walks in and immediately starts up his laptop to begin a PowerPoint presentation. What’s wrong with this picture? Almost nothing. Technology is a beautiful thing that has advanced this world further and faster in the past 10 years than ever before.
I often find myself wondering, though: Is technology ruining the social and interpersonal skills of people both young and old?
Fisk University’s shocking indifference to – hostility to – its ownership of some of the twentieth century’s greatest artworks has finally exhausted the patience of Dwight Lewis, an opinion writer at The Tennessean.
Fisk’s attorney has said that Georgia O’Keeffe’s gift of the spectacular Alfred Stieglitz collection was never of much interest to the university, because most of it was created by “‘Caucasians’ who weren’t Southern and ‘never came to Nashville.'” And now, even with a fund having been offered for the collection’s maintenance, Fisk still wants to sell it all.
Fisk officials said a proposal filed in Chancery Court by state Attorney General Bob Cooper is a “scheme which fails to address Fisk’s survival.’’
A scheme? What in the world is wrong with Fisk’s leadership? There was no scheme involved in Fisk alumna Carol Creswell-Betsch establishing a designated fund at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee so that the Stieglitz Collection could be maintained and kept at Fisk without the university having to spend any money.
Perrone’s family home is valued at $826,000, Smith’s at $1.2 million.
Background of the Georgetown University lab guys.
(Mr UD: “You can see how it happened. Those houses used to be worth twice that.”)
A Washington Post writer talks to one of UD‘s colleagues about George Washington University’s recent decision to bar men from its swimming pool for one hour a week in order to accommodate Muslim women students.
… Ira Lupu [is] a law professor at GW who focuses on church-state issues. I asked him if Muslim women could argue religious discrimination if they couldn’t use the pool because of men, or if male students could argue they were losing out? He seemed to think the latter camp had a better argument due to Title IX’s ban on sexual discrimination in educational programs that get federal money.
“If I was in the [university’s] office of general counsel, I’d say make it the same for men as women,” said Lupu.
Israeli students have had it. Thousands of them have hit the streets to protest continuing government stipends for yeshiva students, money dispensed even in the face of a recent High Court of Justice ruling that the stipends are discriminatory. As Haaretz writes:
[The stipend] is bad news for anyone who values equality and the rule of law… [The ongoing financial support] sends the message to university and college students, who do not receive benefits of which the income allowances are only a part, that Israel prefers poverty and backwardness to enlightenment and contributing to society.
The student government president at Hebrew University succinctly explains why so many university students are protesting: “We want to stop this disgusting law.”
Background here.
… “You can’t put a price on the loyalty a successful football program breeds.”
To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.
On a cold and starry Christmas-eve within living memory a man was passing up a lane towards Mellstock Cross in the darkness of a plantation that whispered thus distinctively to his intelligence. All the evidences of his nature were those afforded by the spirit of his footsteps, which succeeded each other lightly and quickly, and by the liveliness of his voice as he sang in a rural cadence:
“With the rose and the lily
And the daffodowndilly,
The lads and the lasses a-sheep-shearing go.”
Here’s the song he’s singing, It’s a Rosebud in June.
UD plays and sings it at the piano, using this book.
Whether ’tis wiser to dump this guy before he does something else (besides expose himself plus get arrested on alcohol violations), or seek to avoid the disruption of student government impeachment hearings…
The athletic department’s budget is stretched beyond its means, due in part to buyouts of prematurely dismissed revenue-sport coaches, of which [University of Minnesota coach Tim] Brewster is now the third in four years.
His original contract was set to expire after the 2011 season, but since Maturi gave him a two-year contract extension in January, the University is now on the hook for about $775,000 in Brewster buyout costs, according to the Star Tribune, which also reported the athletic department had to take out a loan from central administration to cover $5 million worth of buyouts associated with the early terminations of Brewster’s predecessor Glen Mason and former basketball coach Dan Monson.
Gearing up for a fourth winner.
… the story of UD‘s college drug use.
Everyone’s talking about college drug use, onaccounta the Georgetown University drug lab guys, and a lot of people around UD‘s age are reminiscing about the drugs they did in the dear dead dorm days beyond recall…
When I search my mind for images of UD high, at Northwestern University, I discover one measly memory-trace. (Alcohol-wise, the results are no better. I remember vomiting spaghetti into a toilet after drinking hard liquor. End of alcohol story.)
It was Christmas, and my roommates had all gone home. I was still in Chicago because, being a fuck-off, I’d postponed taking a take-home final until the very, very last minute. I remember the test was about Walt Whitman in particular, and Romanticism in general…
I sat at a desk that wasn’t mine – don’t remember which of my roomies used it – and I played vaguely with stuff in the top drawer while pulling myself together…
Right away I saw a very fat marijuana cigarette. I took the joint out and lit it, figuring being high while writing about Romanticism made plentiful, plentiful sense. I also turned the radio on, figuring listening to loud music while writing about Romanticism…
Because I was a weed virgin, I got astoundingly high almost immediately.
The radio was tuned to an insane born-again preacher berating listeners about their sickening materialism, most starkly on view during the holidays. He shrieked of UD’s evil ways, her selfish ways, her godless ways, and threatened her with damnation.
UD listened, enrapt. She leaned close to the radio and took in every word, weighing it carefully. She forgot about her exam. She took a few more drags. Not many. She was high as a kite and the owner of the joint would never know anyone had touched it. She listened to the man as if he were Kant on the categorical imperative. She marshalled her intellectual resources to follow his argument…
But she had no resources, and after about fifteen minutes she gave up trying to follow his logic and turned instead to her Whitman essay.
She got an A.
Why do you think she went on to become an English professor? UD can do this stuff in her sleep. Or blotto.
Vancouver’s Dead Poet’s Slam takes place tonight at the Cafe Deux Soleils.
All hallow’s eve is almost upon us so that means it’s time for the Dead Poet’s slam. Come dressed as your favorite dead poet. Read some Sylvia Plath with an oven on your head. Perform some Al Purdy or some Charles Bukowski with some beer in your hand. All dead poets are welcome. And as a feature we have–back from the dead–Janis Joplin.
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[First in a series of UD Halloween posts.]
Sue Marcum, an accounting professor at American University here in DC, has been found dead in her Bethesda house; police are calling it a probable homicide.
The comment about her in my headline – taken from Rate My Professors – is typical. She was apparently able to make a pretty dull subject interesting. Almost everyone agrees that she was a great teacher.
The few details about her death that have been released suggest a robbery that turned deadly — a shocking event for her safe, affluent neighborhood.
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The AU newspaper describes her students, some of them in tears, leaving her empty classroom this afternoon.
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Update: A break in the case.
“We were down in the alumni section and we were watching the step show with our kids and it was great because nobody was drunk,” said Lori Stratton.
The University of Arizona experiments with a no-alcohol zone at homecoming.