… a few hours ago.

… administrators are choosing to spend millions on sports programs with only the faintest hope that they’ll one day see a return on their investment other than the dubious intangible benefits of having a few second-rate sports squads around to keep up school spirit. Moreover, they’re spending more on those programs every year.”

Jordan Weissmann does the numbers.

… seconds ago, loping comfortably across UD‘s back field into the woods. But BIG! Not like your long low to the ground delicate fox – high, broad-shoulded…

Well-fed. And why shouldn’t it be. Longtime readers know UD‘s heavily-wooded Garrett Park land is a predator’s paradise. Yesterday, an eagle, scared by a train whistle, whooshed down from one of her trees.

Later this morning, UD and her sister go to Rehoboth Beach for a few days. Blogging continues as always.

… I guess. When we were at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland decades ago, UD‘s then-boyfriend, David Kosofsky (brother of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick), took it into his head that we should pretend to be Israelis. Little UD must have passively gone along, but the evil genius was David; and UD remembers how horrified and trapped she felt when she realized that the inane scheme was working all too well — that people at the school indeed assumed he wasn’t lying (what kind of a freak would lie about such a thing?) and in a kindly way inquired about their backgrounds, asked if there were special foods they should prepare for them at dinner, wondered if they’d been traumatized by that country’s difficult history, etc., etc.

UD felt shame. She insisted that David figure out a way to stop the game.

To this day, UD can’t enjoy the whole Sacha Baron Cohen thing, where you laugh at the efforts of well-meaning people to be polite and understanding toward some fake identity you’ve made them believe in. The word for this is cruel, and it’s not exactly news that everyone has the capacity to be cruel, and that some people have a large capacity.

As to the Manti Te’o hoax at Notre Dame, UD can only say what she’s said for so long in this blog category (hoaxes are so common, they’ve got their own category on University Diaries): The world is full of vaguely sociopathic game-players, and, you know, let the buyer beware. Walk down your street of dreams – don’t let me stop you – but do yourself a favor and wonder occasionally if the uncannily exact match between certain inspirational stories on offer (see also Lance Armstrong) and your desires in regard to inspiration is just too close for credibility.

I’m a sap too – I don’t mean to suggest otherwise. But as an inveterate hoax-watcher, I do begin to see patterns.

Here’s Tulane’s provost, commenting on Tulane’s business school having for years made up US News and World Report numbers.

In a statement, Tulane Provost Michael Bernstein, the university’s chief academic officer, said: “I sincerely regret that these events occurred and that one person could so negatively impact how others see us as a place of learning. I am, however, proud of the manner and rigor by which Dean Solomon, Tulane and Jones Day took to get to the bottom of this concern and create an even stronger framework for future reporting.”

The first sentence simply stitches cliches together – including the hideous “negatively impact.” “Negatively impact” is precisely the wordy vacuous pomposity Orwell went after so long ago in Politics and the English Language.

The second… Read it again.

I am, however, proud of the manner and rigor by which Dean Solomon, Tulane and Jones Day took to get to the bottom of this concern and create an even stronger framework for future reporting.

Basic grammar seems beyond this man, the highest-profile voice for a “place of learning.” This man has failed to write a simple, correct sentence. Tulane seems to have no one in its administration to scan official statements and edit them.

Nevada, our most mentally challenged state, is about to spend eight hundred million dollars on a 60,000-seat stadium for one of the losingest university sports teams around: University of Nevada Las Vegas football.

In an era where it’s been proven time and time again that building new sports and entertainment facilities doesn’t necessarily immediately create a return on investment — in fact, it often does the opposite — there is still no hesitation to go with the bigger is better model of property development.

It will feature a 100-yard long Adzillatron – the entire length of the field. It’s one thing to hurl shrieking sixty-yard long ads at captive audiences; at one hundred yards, there’s really no getting away from them.

The best commentary UD has so far seen on this comes from a reader of SB Nation:

It’s pitiful.

But we’re Vegas and we do stupid shit like this all the time.

And one fewer professor teaching grammar.

… avoid mixed metaphors.

Southern Cal has always struggled to gain a competitive foothold in the world of college basketball while playing second fiddle to its crosstown arch-rival UCLA, coming close on several occasions only to have it torn away by scandal or impatience.

They create confusion. And note the connection between mixed metaphors and cliches (playing second fiddle). They often appear together. Avoid cliches.

Things get worse in a later paragraph:

The institutional decline of Southern Cal, as business consultant and educator Jim Collins would put it, came like a staged disease; an initially unknown cancer that ate away silently at USC fed by its own gluttony for success. At first, it was almost impossible to detect but easily correctable. If the powers that be could have saw the writing on the wall and slowed the bleeding, the program might have been saved. Yet USC sunk deeper and deeper into the quicksand of its own arrogance, until it realized that all it had accomplished had only come about because of broken rules and scorched earth.

Let’s unpack.

The institutional decline of Southern Cal, as business consultant and educator Jim Collins would put it, [Would put what? What in the first words of this sentence does the “it” here refer to?] came like a staged disease; an initially unknown cancer that ate away silently at USC [The reader feels a sense of dread as this overused analogy gets going.] fed by its own gluttony for success. At first, it was almost impossible to detect but easily correctable. If the powers that be could have saw [Wow. Forbes, we have a problem.] the writing on the wall and slowed the bleeding, [Again, note the combination of cliche – writing on the wall, stop the bleeding – and mixed metaphor.] the program might have been saved. Yet USC sunk deeper and deeper into the quicksand of its own arrogance, [The final stage of this staged disease is quicksand.] until it realized that all it had accomplished had only come about because of broken rules and scorched earth. [Can’t resist throwing yet another image – scorched earth – onto his pile of words.]

… is bombed. Probably by the government.

… got filmed – it’s alleged – by the director of media for that university’s athletic department – coming out of showers after games.

[He] made the recordings by positioning the camera at waist level and placing a piece of tape over the red light to conceal that it was recording. [Authorities] “quickly discounted” the possibility of that having been done accidentally.

He accidentally placed a camera at waist level hundreds of times?

Yes, I think we can quickly discount that.

So here’s UD in today’s George
Washington University Hatchet,
upholding herself.

Read all about it.

(Click twice on photo
for larger image.)

(Front page. On which
I upstage Lloyd Elliott.)

MIT’s president sends an email to the school in the aftermath of Aaron Swartz’s suicide.

It was at MIT that Swartz illegally downloaded millions of JSTOR articles; and while JSTOR itself chose not to press charges, “U.S. Attorneys Carmen Ortiz and Steve Heymann, backed by Federal government, continued to pursue the prosecution of Swartz, with the tacit support of MIT behind them.”

… took a Zipcar to Rokeby Avenue this morning. He posed UD doing one of her MOOC lectures in front of her baby grand, and he clicked away for quite some time.

I’ll link you to the article when it comes out.

Well, this one wins a prize.

As explanations for plagiarism go, it’s a winner.

And this guy needs a prize, just having lost one for plagiarizing – virtually in its entirety – a poem that had won him a contest.

Like almost all copiers, he’s done it many times.

He’s begun examining his other poems for plagiarism. Apparently you never know where the muse will send you.

I have begun to examine my published poems to make sure there are no similar mistakes. I want to be as honest as I can with the poetry community and I know it will take some time to regain their trust. Already I have discovered a 2009 poem called The Neighbour is very similar to Tim Dooley’s After Neruda and admit that a mistake has been made. I am still digging and want a fresh start.

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

UPDATE: People have begun writing limericks about Ward. Here’s one, from comments on a Telegraph article:

There was a young poet called Ward,
Whose verses appeared to be fraud,
When questioned about it,
He claimed he’s been ‘careless’,
An excuse that is seriously flawed.

Not bad. Here’s one from UD, American-accent style:

There was a young poet called Ward
Who thought of his childhood and soared
To heights of great feeling…
These turned out to be stealing
Which he thought would go largely ignored.

The suicide of a 26-year-old principled hacker (if you can be that) has people speculating. They speculate that because he was facing prosecution for hacking into JSTOR and liberating scads of academic papers he became fatally depressed. No doubt being incredibly young and facing a serious trial whose outcome might be jail time undermined him; but he had a history of depression as well.

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

From the New York Times:

In 2007, Mr. Swartz wrote about his struggle with depression, distinguishing it from the emotion of sadness. “Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don’t feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness.” When the condition gets worse, he wrote, “you feel as if streaks of pain are running through your head, you thrash your body, you search for some escape but find none. And this is one of the more moderate forms.” Earlier that year, he gave a talk in which he described having had suicidal thoughts during a low period in his career.