Put his lucrative years of fraud and bribery down to advanced racket technique: A golden boy tennis coach at Georgetown University who taught the likes of the Obama kids, he recognized early that he could trade bogus athletic admission recommendations on behalf of the dim spawn of the super-rich and charge super-sums for the favor. Details here.
Hard to think of an easier way to earn millions than having your assistant write a note to the admit office insisting that the tennis team needs this one great high school grad on it! With that money, Ernst bought a Chevy Chase (a neighborhood just up the road from UD that gets even higher prestige points than UD‘s own ‘thesda) house practically next door to the house of a super-rich lobbyist where – fun fact – Les UDs spent an evening, long ago, in the company of Morton Kondracke and other denizens.
Ernst was just gonna brazen it out and keep hitting winners through his upcoming trial; but facing an array of witnesses who would no doubt add details to his scoring record, he decided to plead guilty and go to jail. Meanwhile, a serious investigation of ever-scandal-ridden Georgetown University needs to happen.
His death is announced here; and here are many tributes, with perfect and imperfect English. A few that caught UD‘s eye follow.
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‘I can’t forget that when I was admitted to Manhattan School of Music, you cared for me and taught me like a father. You always leave the school very late, and I always can see you downstairs in the school in the midnight . I can’t describe my pleasantly surprise when you appeared in the concert hall and listened to my performance in the final recital of the Bach class and the harpsichord class. After that, you summed up all the problems in my performance for me, and I deeply feel your great support for your students. You have paid so much attention for us, you always devote all your energy to music and teaching. In the future, I will also teach many students. As your student, I‘m determined to learn and pass on your dedication and rigorous teaching attitude, as well as the spirit of selfless care for students.’
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‘Today is your funeral day. Even till now, it’s still too hard for me to believe that this thing had happened. The date 9th of September in America which is 10th of September in China is my country’s Teacher’s Day. I wanted to say Happy Teacher’s Day to you but didn’t have chance. But I know someday I will meet you again, at the end of my life.’
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‘But what made Mr. PK great wasn’t just his amazing insight in the classroom; it was also his above-and-beyond support for everyone he cared about. There were so many moments we shared outside of the classroom. I’ll always remember our trip to Italy where he said that he came up with the idea for me to play Prokofiev’s 1st Piano Concerto in a dream… He would always go to my performances whenever he could, no matter … where they were or how important they were. I specifically remember he went to one of my gigs, and he asked to be dropped off at his studio in MSM at 1:30 AM instead of at his apartment because he had to practice a Beethoven Piano Concerto for an upcoming concert in Moscow!’
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‘One of the most enduring memories from my lessons with Prof. Kawin was his insistence that I use the weight of gravity to “sink” into the last two chords of Brahms’ g minor Rhapsody. I never quite managed to create the wonderfully rounded sound that he could.’
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‘I can’t imagine you are gone. Just a few days ago I was still imagining what the first class of our new semester should look like. I have a lot to say to you, but I never have a chance again. I still remember what you said to me, your voice is always full of passion for music and you always encourage me. May you rest in peace.
Your stupid student Jialin’
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‘I am still not ready for saying good-bye. You will be in my heart forever as my most wonderful teacher, my mentor, my friend, and beautiful musician like as your warm heart. I learned from you not only music but also life which has to be beautiful and wise. Thank you for being my teacher and I will miss you and love you. Don’t forget you were always be loved.’
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‘He attended my bar mitzvah in 1998, and years later, my 12-year-old photo was amongst the collection on his studio wall. There were never one-hour lessons; there were only 2, 2.5-hour lessons, however long was necessary. Time stopped in his Room 228 studio, and the music ruled.’
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‘I felt guilty of not spending enough time to talk with you casually when you were always there for me. All I knew was to focus my attention more into work, technical skills, while not willing to open myself up to you for a casual talk. I owe you and myself a deepest apology for not knowing you truly as a person rather than a tutor when you were still alive.’
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‘He once asked: “do you see that picture of Rachmaninoff’s hand and my own, aren’t they alike!” His way of teaching Russian music was unlike anyone else. He taught me the importance of fingering ( Beethoven 111, Ravel’s Scarbo)- During one of his classes a Gym Promoting number called him, he picked up and hanged up ( He said to me I’m doing the fingering for Beethoven Op.111 that’s enough exercise for the whole day).’
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‘I know you needed the cup of iced coffee always because you were always lacking of sleep from long lessons after midnight or thoughts about your students. Even if you blamed me that our lessons get too long because we talk too much, I know you truly believed that without life, there is no music. Your life was art itself, and music was your life.’
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‘Mr. Kawin was a concert pianist, recording pianist, educator, accomplished turtle collector. A very sloppy person who couldn’t find a charger at his home but knew every inch of [the Manhattan School of Music]. A strange man who spelled gute Nacht with umlaut but read every Asian student’s name accurately.’
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‘Art was his religion and he truly dedicated himself to it! I can not write about him, because every-time I start writing or see his pictures my eyes fill up with tears. He will always be remembered with his child-like, naive smile!’
“It was America that drew their fury. It was the high gloss of our modernity. It was the thrust of our technology. It was our perceived godlessness. It was the blunt force of our foreign policy. It was the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mind…
[T]here is no logic in apocalypse. They have gone beyond the bounds of passionate payback. This is heaven and hell, a sense of armed martyrdom as the surpassing drama of human experience.
He pledges his submission to God and meditates on the blood to come…
There are the doctors’ appointments that saved lives, the cellphones that were used to report the hijackings. Stories generating others and people running north out of the rumbling smoke and ash. Men running in suits and ties, women who’d lost their shoes, cops running from the skydive of all that towering steel…
When the second tower fell, my heart fell with it…
[W]hatever great skeins of technology lie ahead, ever more complex, connective, precise, micro-fractional, the future has yielded, for now, to medieval expedience, to the old slow furies of cut-throat religion…
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It is possible to pass through some checkpoints, detour around others. At Chambers Street I look south through the links of the National Rent-A-Fence barrier. There stands the smoky remnant of filigree that marks the last tall thing, the last sign in the mire of wreckage that there were towers here that dominated the skyline for over a quarter of a century…
When we say a thing is unreal, we mean it is too real, a phenomenon so unaccountable and yet so bound to the power of objective fact that we can’t tilt it to the slant of our perceptions. First the planes struck the towers. After a time it became possible for us to absorb this, barely. But when the towers fell. When the rolling smoke began moving downward, floor to floor. This was so vast and terrible that it was outside imagining even as it happened. We could not catch up with it. But it was real, punishingly so, an expression of the physics of structural limits and a void in one’s soul, and there was the huge antenna falling out of the sky, straight down, blunt end first, like an arrow moving backwards in time…
The writer begins in the towers, trying to imagine the moment, desperately. Before politics, before history and religion, there is the primal terror. People falling from the towers hand in hand. This is part of the counternarrative, hands and spirits joining, human beauty in the crush of meshed steel.”
We’re still far away from actual head-clearing, but there’s reason to hope.
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But don’t get too excited.
“[9/11 was] an attack on the heteropatriarchal capitalistic systems that America relies upon to wrangle other countries into passivity. It was an attack on the systems many white Americans fight to protect.”
First, a diversionary ultra-team places itself in front of the team’s synagogue so police think they’re up to no good; then, while police aren’t watching, other ultras scale the synagogue roof and enter the building (breaking lock-down orders).
When police get wise to the ruse, ultras inside the building race back up to the roof and then escape the police by running along other Melbourne rooftops!
The so-called “Piety Pentathlon” incorporates
scaling a building
climbing into the building from the roof
climbing back up to the roof
racing across rooftops
climbing down from rooftops
Spectators are amazed.
A neighbour, who identified himself as Brent but declined to provide a surname, said he had seen several men enter the building in the same way over the past fortnight.
“I wasn’t around on Tuesday, but this has been going on for a while now, and often happens around early evening. It’s just bizarre,” he said.
Background: Purple flowers just gathered from UD‘s pollinator garden. This prolific plant had begun to cascade over her stepping stones, making walking there difficult. Particularly difficult, because the cascade sags with bees. Tried to cut it back yesterday afternoon, but there were too many bees.
Far fewer this morning, so with long sleeves, long pants, Mr UD‘s very big hat, and plenty of bug spray, I safely did the deed.
That state’s head is so far up its ass on so many big issues that you’re assured legal work as everyone – the Justice Department just filed- sues Texas for everything all the time.
It’s the sweetest litigation the country ever knew Abortion, guns, and voting, they’re waiting there for you! You may talk about your tort law and your pers’nal injury But the law biz down in Texas is the only game for me.
Ippolito, a licensed pharmacist andowner of Northgate Pharmacy inWaldorf, and Shifflett, an employee at the pharmacy, were indicted by a Charles County Grand Jury in August. Ippolito distributed narcotics to an undercover officer and Shifflett was conducting street deals of pharmaceutical controlled substances that she obtained from the pharmacy.
…The answer is that we did. Our silence has turned us into enablers of those who are now foisting their religious beliefs on a country founded on opposition to an established church.
… About one-third of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, want the court to overturn Roe. And yet, as we saw last week, the right to abortion is already functionally dead in Texas, and its fate may soon be left to the whims of Republican politicians everywhere else. It’s incumbent on the rest of us to call out those who invoke God as their legislative drafting partner.
It’s small stories like this – the city put up a street sign honoring a drug dealer – that help you understand how far the place where UD was born has fallen.
No one was home, the relevant agency is corrupt, the relevant agency sees nothing wrong with honoring drug dealers – there are many possibilities…
And look. Why take the sign down?
“I don’t think they should have taken the sign down because, at some time, I’m sure he did some great works for humanity,” said Anecia Spears.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam. New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days. The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading. Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life. AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics. truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption. Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings. Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho... The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo. Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile. Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure. Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan... Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant... Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here... Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip... Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it. Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ... Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic... Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ... The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard. Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know. Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter. More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot. Notes of a Neophyte
