An Oregon man is accused of tipping a prostitute with an exotic primate swiped from his own pet store along with stolen Girl Scout cookie money and a laptop computer.

Iowa State University President Steven Leath said he would love to see athletics at ISU provide financial support to academics.

However, he was not optimistic about this occurring anytime soon.

“We are facing a number of very large, comprehensive serious lawsuits related to athletics,” Leath said. “So before we would change our budget structure and put money into academics, we want to at least get past some of these immediate lawsuits.”

… as she devoted her considerable intelligence and visual skill to the understanding and preservation of England’s medieval heritage, lived alone in a Devon cottage. In retirement, she was active in her town’s affairs, in the continued pursuit of her research, and in the right to die movement.

Because of what she called, in her suicide note, “the illogical, cruel British law” which forbids assisted suicide, once she became too debilitated and ill to want to go on, she had to die an undelicate and ugly death, alone, days after having been harassed by the police for having imported certain lethal drugs.

The note is a model of incision and self-control — and pathos, as she arranges “burial in my orchard” and specifies that she washed the pills down with “a miniature bottle of Cointreau.” Meticulous and courteous to the end, she notes that

If I have fouled the bath in death, please please be kind enough to wash it down: Dettol is provided.

A sad death for a proud, autonomous woman.

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Mary Warnock has written:

When opponents speak of “life being precious”, they forget that life isn’t a kind of stuff, like water, which has an objective value, and which we can be urged not to squander, but to preserve. If a human being has got to the state where her life is hateful to her, no one else can insist it is valuable. It is for her to judge its value.

Warnock also points out that better palliative care, while a solution for some people, would be insupportable for others.

I do not believe that everyone would prefer palliative care. There are those for whom it would be a nightmare and who would prefer death to the drawn-out process of being kept alive and conscious, however kind, attentive and competent their carers.

This is the second right-to-die professor UD has taken note of on this blog. She tends to agree that this is one of the great human rights issues of our time, and she will approach the controversy by following stories about professors who act on their belief that reasonable people deserve the freedom to decide when they have had enough of life.

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UD thanks dmf.

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A comment on the religious argument:

The main idea here is the “sanctity of life” — the belief that life is precious and death should never be hastened. I can understand this point of view, but I think it should apply only to believers. Why should the rest of the population be held to this standard?

First, Toronto’s North by Northeast Festival; then, UD‘s George Washington University; and now, exceedingly well-heeled Trinity College may be close to deciding that, yes, rich kids like to go slumming, but there are limits.

Ditties celebrating the rape and murder of women just don’t sit well with some folks. Who knows why. But Trinity might be the third institution to disinvite this person.

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For every Action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

It’s a good typo… Not a great typo, but a good one, and in a few hours, when the hangover wears off, the writer will correct it, so you will click on the link and go to the last line in the article and say to yourself Where does UD get off making up typos in order to make people look ridiculous? …

Anyway. I tire somewhat of Rutgers University (in the BBC series, Aristocrats, the dying Charles Fox says I tire somewhat of life), but HBO’s Real Sports featured it as one of America’s exemplary suicide-by-sport schools, and who can argue with the producers’ choice? The fairy-tale world of Fat and Skinny at Rutgers is undeniably riveting:

… Rutgers spent about $26,000 per home game (seven games) last season to board its team in a hotel on the night before kickoff and $69,154.20 total on food before four games.

… [One] Rutgers student … said he works two part-time jobs – moving furniture for the school and driving a cab – and still “can’t afford some meals.”

“Some days I don’t eat,” he said. “Some days I skimp by just drinking water.”

Asked … if he suffers from hunger pains, the student shook his head and said, “some days, yeah,” before adding, “sometimes there are events on campus where there might be light refreshments and things like that. I’d usually try to find one of those and go there.”

Frank Kavanaugh, who used to teach at UD‘s university (he seems to have been the executive producer on The Saving of the President, which won four Emmys), was a right-to-die advocate who shot his wife and himself in her Florida nursing home room yesterday.

He should not have had to end it this way, but only a few states allow a dignified exit.

UD‘s home state, Maryland, might be moving in the right to die direction, but not for awhile.

Great name for a landscaping business.

… for my unseasonably hot, early morning, two miles up and back, Rehoboth Beach boardwalk march.

Everybody on the boardwalk is old.

Rehoboth is a Quiet Resort – not as quiet as some, but definitely not noisy. A pallid Spring Break. No Floatopia. Rehoboth attracts tanned and well-turned oldies.

At the walkway’s midpoint, in front of a white bandstand, three starched nurses holding a STROKE AWARENESS poster have attracted a crowd.

Nathanael West could write this up, thinketh UD…

As UD powers by the nurses, she hears “Totally make relaxation time for yourself… long bath…”

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Do retired people really need this advice she wonders, but what’s really going through her mind is Richard Dawkins, who she admires and who has had a stroke.

The thought of Dawkins sets her off, as she swings her arms and plants her heels, on God and not-God, which occupies her for the duration.

… to remain on the board of for-profit Devry. And a reminder of one of the many benefits of big-money university sports.

DeVry wants [Ann Weaver] Hart for the U of Arizona name and prestige, not for Hart herself. She brings nothing to the table, certainly nothing worth $170,000 a year. The University of Arizona name and its international distinction belong to all of Arizona, not to her for her private benefit or for the benefit of a private entity. (Alas, any moral force the Board of Regents may have had is long gone since coaches regularly appear on local TV as hucksters for businesses wearing their Arizona logos and even with the student Wildcat mascot in the background of commercials).

UD this morning leaves the absurdly massively blooming azaleas of Garrett Park for Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. She will of course blog from there.

… she must state for the record that whether it’s Trump University or the University of Phoenix or Laureate International Universities or the Minerva Project, most of it ranges from lousy to fraudulent, and just as many Democrats as Republicans are happy to make money off of it.

UD has her own favorite examples of this greedy hypocritical activity…

But more immediately, keep in mind that thanks to Hillary Clinton’s warm relationships with several for-profits, she has made it easy for Donald Trump to defend his own shitty chiseling ed venture as pretty much indistinguishable from several similar ventures with which Clinton has been involved.

… come to UD‘s final lecture in her series of lectures on poetry at the Georgetown Public Library tomorrow at 2:00.

The library is steps from the cafes of Georgetown, and steps from the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks. With all of that, you could put together a really nice Saturday afternoon.

If you want to understand the University of Tennessee, one of America’s most depraved locations, watch this clip from An Officer and a Gentleman.

To understand why UT protects accused rapists, hires scummy coaches who arrive on campus trailing their scummy pasts like bright streamers, puts its athletic program in 200 million dollars of debt, and in every conceivable way craps on the word university, you have to understand that for UT there is nothing else besides field games. It has nowhere else to go. It’s got nothing else. Take away ball games and you’ve got a big gaping hole that owes money to every crooked coach in America.

Why, UD has wondered for years, do the citizens of Tennessee keep paying for this? True, they live in what has long been one of the most corrupt states in America.… So maybe they’ve given up. Maybe they don’t care that the money they work for doesn’t educate their kids but keeps dirty coaches in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. In a sane world, Tennessee’s residents would have generated a popular tax revolt or two. Instead, UD envisions them – much like the depressed vodka-swilling citizens of the former Soviet Union – motionless in their houses with the tv on to some shitty UT game, knocking back bourbon.

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UD thanks John.

Why not dig up Paterno if you want to win some games? Huh guys? Am I right?

The people at UA ask why
Their president whores for DeVry.
“Oh, go lay a fart,”
Says President Hart,
“Fuck off, adios, and bye-bye.”

Sign the petition.