All the rain has made my woods and garden a rainforest. Every morning I walk around the half acre, holding a pair of scissors with which I clip back ivy and honeysuckle and even hydrangea overstepping its bounds. A bright litter of birdcalls strews the ground.
(I ripped that last sentence off from An Arundel Tomb.)
Today as I passed the small secret garden I made last year, a hidden place just big enough for a writing table and a chair, I saw something on the table. Gray, lumpy, not moving. A dead squirrel?
As I got closer, two huddled mourning doves materialized. Asleep.
It’s hard to keep a good shill down. Ignoring explicit conflict of interest policies, at least twelve hucksters who teach at Stanford University’s medical school are still at it, trading their institution’s prestige for tens of thousands of dollars from drug companies each semester.
A public interest group pointed this rule-breaking out to do-nothing Stanford, which is apparently – in response to growing press interest in the scandal – slowly beginning to discipline these people.
As long as universities consider it not quite the done thing to call its pitchmen and pitchwomen out on their sales careers, COI policies will remain a joke.
… and it’s got a pretentious French title: Tapis Roulant Hédonique
********************
Update: “Don’t you know who I am?”
If it’s true that DSK repeated this, it would be totally according to Jonah Lehrer’s script.
Everyone knows about the prescription drug abuse pandemic going on in the country right now, and of course universities, full of immature people experimenting with pills and alcohol, have plenty of problems along these lines.
One high-profile overdose death – a nineteen year old at the University of Arizona, the well-connected son of the Tennessee Democratic Party chair – points to the difficulties schools face in responding to the situation. Although Wilson Forrester was such a notorious user that he’d earned the nickname Blackout Willie, no one seems to have done anything about it.
The UA Police report outlines a sad tale of people who knew the student was deep into drugs and alcohol but did little more than warn him to change.
As I say in this post’s title, the University of Arizona and the local police should in response try to bust a bit of the campus drug trade. Wouldn’t hurt if UA’s president issued some sort of statement as well.
***********************************
Update: Probably another one.
… hit back cleanly. Here, Newt’s press secretary defends his man against recent attacks from the lamestream media.
The press secretary strikes the right belligerent tone, but his mixed metaphors confuse us rather than rouse us to indignation.
The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods.
Instead of gaining a clear picture of the press bullies, we struggle with three incompatible images:
1. A firefight.
2. Sheep.
3. Cocktail parties.
Our minds, striving to make sense of disparate phenomena, put it all together into a picture of party-going, pistol-packing, sheep. This takes us very far away from the image of embattled heroic Gingrich that’s intended.
Also – You want to end on a strong word. Here, we have a lot of exciting build-up, and we’re panting to see what actual evil thing the media has done to Newt Gingrich. But instead of a word like “lies,” we get the careful (cowardly?) “distortions and falsehoods.”
After all that firepower, this is a letdown. Big guns don’t shoot distortions and falsehoods! Not in the US of A! They shoot lies, baby!
******************************
Update: Now, this is good writing.
The sheer spectacle of watching Newt try to live out his man-of-destiny fantasies and failing utterly — always in ways that were cringe inducing, yet impossible to turn away from — evoked something powerful that I couldn’t quite place. But then last night, I figured it out. It must have been Newt’s $500,000 Tiffany’s account, or maybe his apology to Paul Ryan. Anyway, I realized that everything about Newt Gingrich–the operatic temperament, the multiple divorces, the six-figure credit line at Tiffany’s, the ego, the solipsism, the sheer haplessness and capacity for self-delusion–it all summons up the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
You see how his build-up ends with a bang?
Newt press secretary: Take note.
*****************************
Update: Graphic.
*****************************
In recital.
Newt Gingrich has had an epiphany:
“The music of love’s a polyphony.
I would thee endow
With five hundred thou.
Thank God for the Chevy Chase Tiffany’s.”
… and then sells antiquities in Israel.
The Israeli authorities follow him around. They watch him conduct sales of the stolen goods. His customers are foreigners he meets while acting as a tour guide at ancient sites.
So far so good. So you arrest the guy, tell reporters his name, tell his history department back in the States, and set a trial date.
But no. I guess the law in Israel is that you can’t name the guy – at least until his trial?
So while UD would love to tell you – especially since they stopped him as he was boarding a plane back to the States and found “tens of thousands of dollars” worth of artifacts on him – who this guy is, and… Wait. Boarding a plane?
The professor admitted to the offenses and after posting bail was allowed to leave the country.
So you take the goods back and then let the guy fly to back to the States? What’s that about? Have you even bothered to tell authorities here – or the guy’s university?
If your history professor were an antiquities crook, awaiting trial abroad, wouldn’t you want to know about it?
******************************
Update: Hokay. John Lund, 70 years old, retired lecturer. (Where? I’ll see if I can find out.)
Lund was allowed to leave after posting a $7,500 bond meant to guarantee he will return to stand trial.
Huh? He’ll eat the money and stay home, no? Still don’t understand why Israel let him go.
*******************************
Is this the guy? Appears to be a Mormon…?
Dr. Lund retired after teaching for thirty-six years in the CES Institute program.
*********************************
Wow. The lands of the Book of Mormon. New one on me. (“See Educator Video.”)
His work is discussed in a recent issue of Mormon Times.
*********************************
Got his own website. Does not include in his list of books the one about blacks and the Mormon church.
**********************************
Curiouser and curiouser. The story’s growing by leaps and bounds — nobody’s calling this fraud a professor anymore — but Israel’s behavior — letting Lund go not once but twice — remains baffling.
First Release:
Antiquities officials discovered Lund selling artifacts at a lecture he gave in a Jerusalem hotel, [an antiquities security official said]. They seized the items, searched him and his hotel room, where they found hundreds of artifacts…. Because all the items had been recovered and Lund was a tourist, “We thought it was appropriate to let him off with a warning,” [the official] said. “But we kept our eyes open … and sure enough, the guy kept on doing what he was told not to.”
Wha…? Is this Mommy, or is this a fraud unit? First of all, they didn’t recover everything; he was found loaded with goodies at the airport. Second, he’s selling artifacts in the open, while giving a lecture, in a hotel. Brazen theft. Public flaunting and marketing of stolen goods. But – hey – we’re sure we got it all! All of the hundreds of artifacts! And after all the guy’s a tourist. Foreign countries never arrest tourists.
Second Release:
[H]e had stolen ancient coins in his possession and checks totaling more than $20,000 believed to be from the illegal sales of ancient coins, clay oil lamps, and glass and pottery vessels.
Lund was allowed to leave after posting a $7,500 bond meant to guarantee he will return to stand trial.
“It is very painful for us,” said Marc Djebali, vice president of the Sarcelles Jewish community. “I know him well. I’ve even seen him seduce a woman, but it was always with gentleness.”