[Republican Senate candidate Tom Campbell’s] brains and demeanor could collide with the prevailing political winds this year as no other. A consummate and genteel academic who holds degrees from two of the nation’s top universities, he is seeking election [from California] at a time when white-hot anger and verbal flame-throwing is more likely to arouse the GOP primary voters who will decide his fate in June.
University Diaries has covered, over the years, a number of stories involving medical school professors – especially anesthesiologists – who abuse or become addicted to the pills they handle. Pharmacy professors and students have similar levels of access, and similar problems.
Charles Butler, an eminent British pharmacologist who until recently was a visiting professor at Reading University, has been hoarding and illegally dispensing a zillion drugs. But he has his reasons.
Prof Butler, who was awarded an MBE in 2005 for services to the NHS, pretended he had to hire a locum to cover his absences at a pharmacy practice while he was working as an advisor to a health watchdog.
But police discovered that Prof Butler, an advisor to the Department of Health, had sold his practice years earlier.
During a raid on a flat he owns in Whitechapel, east London, officers also found drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, “crystal meth” and the date-rape drug GHB, which police believe were used during sex parties hosted by the 64-year-old.
… [Butler] claimed almost £175,000 in expenses from the Health Services Commission to pay for a locum at his practice while he was away.
… During the raid on Butler’s second home in London, police found cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, marijuana resin and the “date rape” drugs gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and rohypnol, which are powerful relaxants.
Sedatives including temazapam, diazepam, ketamine and midazolam were also discovered…
The winners of this year’s Pritzker
Award for architecture are a Japanese
team, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.
Their recently completed learning center
at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne
is a sad flat cratered slice of moon
inside of which the lunar abstraction
proceeds unhindered by any object
of interest, or, indeed, any differentiation
into rooms where one might privately
study or daydream or make out.
No dreaming allowed in this bright white
airport where your every step has been
engineered for maximum visual access,
so that you can become another plastic
white chair.
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
Sylvia Plath captured the mood.
The Moon and the Yew Tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky——
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness——
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.
… strong on detail.
… makes a direct appeal to her fellow students. Final paragraph of her opinion piece:
… As a student who does well in her classes without the use of a laptop, I implore you to try spending a few classes without your laptop. Take notes by hand and underline important parts of readings as you discuss them in class, rather than just scrolling through an on-screen PDF. I think you’ll find it much easier to focus on the material at hand and you’ll learn a lot more…
This Boston Globe opinion piece tells you the reason.
From the moment she clapped eyes on him at a Knight Commission gathering a few years ago, UD knew Michael Adams, president of the University of Georgia, would be the NCAA’s next president. Unlike Myles Brand, who entered the job with a sense of morality as well as a sense of what universities are (he started his career as a philosophy professor), UGA’s man is a backroom politician all the way down.
His departure from UGA will be good news for that university. Otherwise, it’s barf bag city.
Lucas Holzhaeuer, University of Calgary newspaper:
I realize how handy the internet can be as a simple way to answer the prof’s question or to follow their PowerPoint, but let’s face it, going online will likely lead to distractions. Open a browser and odds are you’ll check your email, make sure nothing changed on Facebook and accidentally start playing “Fancy Pants Adventures” (highly recommended). This leads to a larger issue of you not just zoning out of class, but also distracting all those immediately behind you. All in all, surfing the internet does not help in note taking, but rather, hinders the process immensely.
The student was a freshman.
… writes a letter to the Washington Post.
Kendall Berry, 22, a member of the FIU football team, was stabbed to death last night on the campus.
[T]wo men were seen arguing outside a recreation center about 9 p.m., and witnesses said one stabbed the other.
Via UD‘s buddy Dave Stone.
… will have a letter published shortly in the Washington Post.
She will not give away its content, but she will share with you the headline the Post editors have placed atop it:
ACADEMIES OF LEARNING… AND LAUGHS
She will of course link to it when it appears.