Stephen Dedalus, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, finally confesses all to a priest.
In the wake of the Strauss-Kahn affair, France, like Dedalus, is letting it all trickle out. Georges Tron has quit; and now Luc Ferry, a former education minister, accuses a former high official of child sex abuse.
Here are two.
The first, from UD‘s old friend Dave, comments on the resignation, this week, of Ohio State’s sweater-vest-wearing coach, Jim Tressel:
A mountain of sleaze (size: Everest)
Has finally buried the sweater-vest.
On this day of slow news,
Free cars and tattoos
Have brought about change for the betterest.
The second has to do with a professor at the University of Houston who reportedly served his students marijuana on a trip abroad:
So how did I spend time in Ghana?
I guess you could say marijuana.
Some reefer and buddha,
With weed and construda,
And cannabis too if you wanna.
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.
There’s a pain goes on and on.
These lyrics from Empty Chairs at Empty Tables (Les Misérables) instantly formed in my mind when I read this morning about the ex-husband of Laura Blank, a woman who works at the City University of New York.
One of the sources Steven Simkin used to pay his divorce settlement was a collapsed Madoff fund (sounds like an unsuccessful soufflé).
When the couple split their assets evenly, the largest chunk of money was invested with Mr. Madoff. Mr. Simkin kept much of his funds in the Madoff account, which was held in his name. Ms. Blank, who said she had no interest in investing with Mr. Madoff, received her settlement proceeds in cash. Shortly after Mr. Madoff admitted wrongdoing in December 2008, Mr. Simkin, a lawyer at one of the country’s most powerful law firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, filed court papers to drastically alter the terms of his divorce settlement. Ms. Blank, he argued in the lawsuit, should be required to turn over millions of dollars that she had received in their settlement to make up for the substantial losses he had sustained in the fraud.
The hardship claim is based on Simkin’s having moved from a 5.7 million to a $4.1 million house.
From the trial of a woman just convicted of health care fraud.
[Isachi] Gil signed dozens of documents claiming that she was providing …diabetic services when, in fact, she was attending classes at Florida International University, evidence showed.
Support structure withdrawn.
Ohio State’s ex-coach Jim Tressel
Has made of himself the Lord’s vessel.
He’s preached and he’s preached
And he’s preached and he’s preached.
But he overlooked 21 (Thessal.)
… is an expert in performance management. Under her authority for the last three years, MSU has become arguably the most mismanaged, most under-performing campus in the country.
A humongous sports fan, Bradbury successfully pushed for JQH Arena, MSU’s new money-hemorrhage machine. Reed Olsen, an MSU economics professor, tried to explain to Bradley and MSU’s president and everybody that the arena would be a disaster, but they were too dumb to listen. They all beat up on old Reed. Nobody at a university – least of all its leadership – wants to read damn fool reports with lots of statistics and shit in them.
Okay but now they’re like losing tons of money I mean like what the hell happened? and now it’s time to sell beer there and chisel more fees out of undergraduates and rent out the place to well jackshit anybody I guess and I dunno fuck with the numbers…
The task force recommends the accounting of the arena be combined with Hammons Student Center and Plaster Sports Complex to create a “true” financial picture of athletic venues.
Dunn said the three facilities currently share resources such as personnel.
Former State Auditor Susan Montee last year specifically warned against mixing the finances of JQH Arena with other university sports facilities.
“In that way, it would not be transparent and nobody would be able to tell,” she said then.
Regular readers know that UD has a category – Online Makeover – singling out American universities whose campus life is so sordid, so sodden, so stupid, that it is time for them to shut down their physical plants and reopen as exclusively online institutions.
West Virginia University, whose new coach (the state’s highest paid employee) appears to be a seriously obnoxious drunk, is a perennial Party School winner (it’s number four on the latest list), and is – just to top things off – likely to decide in the next few weeks to sell booze at its football games.
In short, WVA is a Purveyor of Fine Wines and Spirits, and should be allowed to spin off its course-offering component and ply its trade unimpeded.
Walking in the Stars
Last words are not remarkable as a rule.
They drift away, have nothing much to say,
Murmurs hardly loud enough to catch the ear:
‘Please for some water,’ ‘I so cold in here.’
Not more nor less than this or that.
Dying is a puzzled, incoherent act.
But this one! He described his desert days,
Rose-coloured forts and old battalion pals.
‘Servant of the Crown,’ and one of the old school,
He served the King in post-war Palestine.
One still, clear night in Galilee
The stars dripped silver in a midnight sea.
He and his platoon went wading out
Far from shore so that they could shout
Loud among the stars and be heard by God.
He ends before he ends the story:
A sentence cut in half is his last word.
His exultant voice clamours to be heard:
‘I, walking in the stars, in great glory…’
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General Dempsey, 59, earned a master’s degree from Duke University – in English…
Already back in ’09, Jon Stewart was seriously discouraged about the nation’s anti-MBA-grad defense capability. The MBA brigade, equipped by Harvard, Columbia, Wharton, Stanford, and Northwestern with the latest weaponry, launches wave after wave of attacks, year after year, against American suckers like you and me who haven’t learned high-level market-craft. There’s really nothing we can do.
It’s gotten so bad lately, with all the MBA insider traders, that some of their degree-granting institutions have begun to issue public statements.
“These are serious allegations, which if proved true are of great concern to me as a teacher, as a dean, and as someone who is dedicated to restoring people’s trust in business leaders,” said [the dean of the Harvard business school] “We try to do all we can at HBS to convey the importance of integrity and accountability to our students and will keep striving to do more.”
Yadda yadda. He’s talking about yet another insider trader his school trained.
[D]uring his first year at Harvard, [Samir] Barai would have taken the required course ”Decision Making and Ethical Values,” that had been put into HBS’ curriculum eight years earlier. The module offered students an ethical framework to use as a guide for making decisions and using sound judgment… The lessons from that class, including several case studies on ethics, must have eluded him.
One indignant B-school professor, reflecting on all the criminal cases, complains,”People assume that you’re somehow flawed if you go to business school.”
One thing Harvard’s new ethics-oriented dean might do is ask himself what his own professors are modeling for their students. Harvard’s business school, after all, spawned the notorious Monitor Group.
… has been murdered by a gunman who then killed himself. It happened in the parking garage of Florida Hospital. Apparently the gunman was a patient in the hospital.
An Australian commissioner instructs citizens to stop talking about burqas.
Victoria’s anti-discrimination watchdog wants the burqa debate shelved because it puts Muslims in danger.
Equal opportunity and human rights commissioner Helen Szoke said yesterday that constantly airing the issue threatened the safety of Muslim women on public transport and in other public places.
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“Shelve all debates,” said Mr UD when
I told him about Commissioner Szoke.
“Those deliberative democracy types
are really annoying.”
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[image found here]