If you read this blog, you know that the University of Wisconsin’s Pain and Policy Studies group has always been a mite controversial, with its love of drug industry money and its intellectual enthusiasm for that industry’s pain pills. It’s just the sort of academic unit pharma craves in its never-ending quest for respectability (and respectability is quite the holy grail when every year you pay out billions of dollars in marketing violations). Here are all the smiling PPSG people who don’t want to talk to you anymore.

And why not? Because Charles Grassley doesn’t like the fact that much of America is addicted to, or on its way to being addicted to, painkillers, and he sent PPSG a letter because he really wants to talk to them about it.

The groups that were sent letters on Tuesday included the American Pain Foundation, a patient advocacy group, and the Pain and Policy Studies Group at the University of Wisconsin. (The foundation’s board last week voted to close because of “irreparable” financial problems.)

Among other activities, the study group, which at one time received large contributions from Purdue Pharma and other opioid producers, lobbied for changes in state laws making it easier to prescribe the drugs.

Well, they can shut the thing down… But when Congress calls…

UD wouldn’t mind knowing what the University of Wisconsin has been doing all these years while PPSG pill-popped its merry way through their halls. Has the university heard of conflict of interest?

Haven’t written about it in awhile, but longtime readers know that this blog has a tea category (click on TEA to read previous posts on the subject) … And that I drink mainly Marco Polo, from Mariage Frères… And that I like to plan visits to tea plantations, etc.

Cam Muir is a biology professor at the University of Hawaii who, in his spare time, has been growing and processing tea on a tiny plantation located on volcanic slopes. His wife seems to be the genius behind the project, but Muir’s scientific background has also contributed.

[Eliah Halpenny] said few if any insects or predators exist, and the Big Island of Hawaii provided just the right amount of rain, and fertile volcanic soil. Which is why, she added, that “I jumped at the possibility.”

That’s how Big Island Tea was born on the Northeast slope of Mauna Loa Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes on the planet. Halpenny said, “With my husband’s ecological and scientific background and my horticultural interest, we have grown and learned how to process tea over the past 10 years — with a passion.”

Harrod’s has just bought up all of their crop. It paid $90,000 for 22 pounds of tea — a staggeringly high price.

Which is impressive, of course. But more impressive to UD is the whole feel of these lives lived amid smoke plumes. Like W.S. Merwin, these people found their Hawaiian plot of land and set about doing what they loved on it. This photo from the plantation says it all.

War is Peace.

And Ignorance is Strength when you’re a football school. The University of Utah, which cancels all classes to accommodate games, announces to the world that football “provide[s] us a pathway to showcase our academic excellence as well as our athletic strength to a much wider audience.”

The University of Utah! So committed to academic excellence that we say fuck you to professors and students who want to use the campus to hold scheduled classes.

Though the proposed budget was approved by an overwhelming majority of the board, members Betty Steffens, Larry Pendleton and Jim Smith raised their hands in objection.

Smith delivered a passionate plea for the board to re-consider the budget, saying that he would not support a decrease in spending in athletics at a time when FSU’s competitors continue to increase their budgets…

“Florida State needs to decide if we’re going to be in big-time athletics or not,” Smith said after the meeting.

How do you keep stupid schools stupid? Schools like Jim Smith’s Florida State?

Well, there are lots of ways.

But the best way is to keep putting guys like Jim on your boards.

… of my blog series on teaching a MOOC is now up at Inside Higher Education.

When UD says big-time sports destroy universities, this is what she has in mind. People want to think UNC Chapel Hill is a good school, a reputable school, but it’s not. It’s the sort of place that cynically designates entire departments as dumping grounds for athletes UNC would rather not educate because football and basketball are big money. The French worry about a cultural degeneration in their country that they refer to as Italianization. It’s too bad American universities don’t know enough to worry about Auburnization. UNC is definitely getting there.

… at the Irish Embassy this Bloomsday (June 16) at 6 PM.

A lesser man might tremble at the thought of throbbing out those orgasmic yeses in front of H.E. Ambassador Michael Collins, but not UD! No sir! Lemme at him!

UD has two independent study students this semester. One wrote a paper about postmodern American fiction; the other wrote about this mouthful: consociationalism. Not a word UD knew before she began working with Angela, though it turns out that Mr UD knows all about it, and is in fact a friend of Brendan O’Leary’s, a person who writes a lot on the subject.  Over lunch at Kinkead’s this afternoon, UD and Angela worked through her final draft.

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

For dessert, Angela had
Lemon Sampler.
Angela took photos.

Angela said the meringue tart

“reminds me of Heidi.”

We couldn’t figure out

what the thing in the

foreground is so I called it

Powdered Squishy Lemon.

We had a semi-private table with a

view over Pennsylvania Avenue.

I’m behind the computer, editing.

We shared a pot of

Earl Grey tea.

I ate one of the little

raspberry buttons.

[P]eople cling to football. To penetrate that bubble, you literally have to say, “This could be killing our kids.” … You see a guy get totally jacked. He’s down on the ground, we think he might be paralyzed. Everybody is holding hands and praying for this person. But as soon as he gets carted off the field, it’s like the volume comes back on. A pause for a moment, and then someone on TV says, “Well, that puts it in perspective.” No. What puts it in perspective is the fact that five minutes later, we don’t give a shit.

What would our universities do without it?

So let’s head into this post with the understanding that whatever UD – a native Washingtonian – says, she’ll sound like a snob. She’ll sound like someone who doesn’t know that the purpose of a university is to provide venues for boxing bouts full of beer drinkers. She’ll sound as though she doesn’t understand that public universities in particular exist to rent out arenas for whatever activity the voters of some city – say, El Paso – find amusing. She doesn’t understand that the head of a university is someone who spends most of his time in negotiations with the representatives of fight fans who like to drink.

The University of Texas system’s chancellor first tried to keep the fight from taking place in the university arena. He lost. It will go forward. He is now trying to prohibit liquor. The city of El Paso, and the elected leaders of the state, are screaming at him to back down on that too.

And he will. He will be made to back down on the liquor prohibition.

And that is university life in El Paso, Texas.

Les UDs are headed downtown, to the national mall, to see the supermoon. If it actually shows up clearly, it should look quite the thing behind the Washington Monument.

I will blog this experience, or non-experience, or whatever.

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

6:20 PM: Excitement building. An hour ago, I listened to an NPR piece about the supermoon in which it is made abundantly clear that the whole thing is hype. I went out to the deck, where Mr UD was writing.

“Let’s not go to the city. I don’t think it’ll be worth it.”

“I tried to tell you the supermoon wasn’t that big a deal but you didn’t listen. I also tried to tell you that there’ll be another supermoon while we’re at the beach, and we can watch the moonrise from our balcony, but you didn’t listen.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Let’s walk down to the post office at 7:42 and see what we can see.”

“Okay.”

“Meanwhile, how about going to Whole Foods and getting me an asparagus and chicken salad?”

“Okay.”

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

6:29: It’s a strangely cool evening, with massive birdsong coming off of the high trees. As always, I’m transfixed by the self-harmonizing thrush. I try to distinguish its eeohlay from routine squawks and pips, from the mourning dove’s drone. The fearless gray and black catbird with the big black eyes – it follows me around while I mow the lawn – lands two feet away from me and drinks from the stone bath. It has a sharp, harsh cry.

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

8:59 PM: After dinner — chicken and asparagus salad; Mexican cole slaw; iced tea poured from a cocktail shaker La Kid got as a gift from one of her friends

— Les UDs headed over to the post office, one of the few places in the overgrown arboretum which is Garrett Park in which you can actually see more than a little of the sky. But the sky was cloudy and still quite light, and though, sitting on a bench by the CSX tracks adjacent to the P.O., UD was able to make out one distant star, that was all she could see. The supermoon was supermooning elsewhere.

Still, it’s a beautiful night out there, with a cool breeze; and it’s always good to see the town’s roses blooming, and to smell the honeysuckles and viburnums.

… this Tuesday – topic: BAN COLLEGE FOOTBALL – Buzz Bissinger, arguing in favor, begins to make his case. He mentions all the obvious stuff everyone mentions, and drops in a few current yummy examples. Like:

New Mexico State University’s athletic department needed a 70% subsidy in 2009-2010, largely because Aggie football hasn’t gotten to a bowl game in 51 years. Outside of Las Cruces, where New Mexico State is located, how many people even know that the school has a football program? None, except maybe for some savvy contestants on “Jeopardy.” What purpose does it serve on a university campus? None.

All true: It serves no purpose. Yet the question to ask about New Mexico State and other bad schools with expensive football teams is: What purpose does anything serve on that university campus? Wouldn’t eliminating football do away with the only game, as it were, in town? If you banned football, and Auburn and Clemson couldn’t play it anymore, what would be left? People forget that the very scandals schools like these generate are part of their lore, part of the excitement of being a student there. It’s hard to imagine anyone applying to a football school that’s become a shell of its former self. Banning football would ultimately mean closing down dozens of American universities.

Kevin Broadus brings more than 16 years of coaching and recruiting experience to Georgetown. His duties for the Hoyas include recruiting, game preparation, and player development. Remaining in the District for most of his professional career, he has coached at five universities in the metro area.

A native of the D.C. region, Broadus played high school basketball at Dunbar in the District and Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, Md. He left the area for one year to play at Grambling State in Louisiana, but returned home to attend Bowie State, where he lettered for three years and earned his bachelor of science in business administration in 1990.

Following graduation Broadus served as assistant coach at Bowie State until 1993, when he returned to D.C. as an assistant at the University of the District of Columbia, where he stayed until 1997. While coaching at UDC, he earned his master’s degree in counseling in 1995. From 1998 to 2001, he was on the staff at American University. In the summer of 2001, Broadus moved again, this time to George Washington University, where he was an assistant coach until he came to Georgetown in 2004.

And where was Broadus from 2007 to 2009? Oh right. He was front and center at the SUNY Binghamton scandal; the New York Times calls his tenure at Binghamton the “scandal-ridden Kevin Broadus era.” He even gets an era!

But Georgetown has allowed him to airbrush that right out of his webpage.

Way 1984.

How impressive that a university committed to the truth — a Jesuit university, kids! — not only hires this notorious recruiter of diploma mill graduates and criminals, a man who sued for immense sums the last university for which he worked (Binghamton “paid Broadus $1.2 million to leave”), but allows him to fudge his work history on its official site.

Even by the standards of big-time university sports, this is really sickening.

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

UD thanks Polish Peter.

We find one faculty member, and one administrator, to set up a system of bogus independent studies for our football and basketball players. The faculty member pretends to have taught these courses to the athletes, the students keep their traps shut, and the administrator signs off on everything. The players stay eligible without any university-related distractions from their games, the professor gets all kinds of salary bonuses for working so hard for the athletic program, and everyone’s happy.

It’s happening at a big sports school near you. The only reason my title singles out Auburn, Binghamton, and UNC is that these jerks got caught.

Like most of Rutgers University’s almost 30,000 undergraduates, Matt Cordeiro has never put on shoulder pads and played football on a Saturday before a sea of scarlet-clad fans.

Yet Rutgers athletic teams cost him [and every other Rutgers student] almost $1,000 this year, the most among schools competing in the top category of college football. The total includes mandatory student fees and university funding of the money-losing sports program, both of which rose more than 40 percent in five years.