For-profit universities – a class act.

Les UDs were very unhappy to leave Sedona. Both loved its tranquil, thrilling setting, the clear dry air, the red-earth trails among the rocks. Although exhausted (she packed too much in), UD feels joy and gratitude that she was able to see and explore this strange and beautiful place. Soon she’ll be hemmed in by trees in Garrett Park – no spectacular Arizona night sky – and while the beauties of her town’s forest setting are undeniable, she suspects that the vast landscapes of the high desert correspond more closely to her heart’s core.

Longtime readers may recall UD‘s encounter two summers ago with a Las Vegas law firm or company or whatever they were (they don’t seem to exist, much, anymore).

The guy who did her was Coons.

[Dave] Spence, 53, has a degree in home economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia. But the biography on his campaign website originally omitted the word “home” while describing his economics degree …

… and a man found on the scene is arrested.

Update: Much more here. The man arrested was a colleague and friend.

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Another Update: Maybe it wasn’t murder. The dead man appears to have had mental trouble recently. Perhaps the man arrested had tried to prevent his friend from committing suicide?

No one told UD about Buddha Beach.

No one told her that, as she followed Oak Creek beneath the red rocks, she’d come to a clearing full of stacked stones.

First you see this – gatherings of mainly gray stone on top of a large red slab. You think nice pretty cute sweet and move along. A few steps later the whole silver-tree forest is cairns – endlessly, beautifully, everywhere. Not just on the ground around you. Along tree trunks, inside tree hollows. The sculpture’s base is often a large smooth red river rock, on top of which smaller gray, black, white, mottled, and volcanic rocks have been balanced.

You can’t help adding to this spell-binding human offering. With the creek washing along beside you, you begin scouting stones to top off a tower here and a tower there.

Thousands of these little formations lie just under massive Cathedral Rock. They feel like a loving, adorably absurd, affirmation of our connection to Cathedral.

Because anyone can do it!

Hey. New year and all. You’re going to read tons of these articles and opinion pieces in 2012, as the evidence pours in about placebos. The other side has all the money and will keep bombarding you with ads, just the way do-nothing, charge-everything for-profit online schools do. Resolve to think seriously about these come-ons.

Don’t forget. When found to have plagiarized, always blame it on a graduate student.

UD‘s been following plagiarism stories for years, and this is far and away the most popular move.

… the research fraud beat goes on. Diederik Stapel and Dipak Das share a protocol: Just make the shit up.

… with friends who live there. Will blog later in the day.

But if you think they’re going to go down without a fight, you don’t know LSU.

They can’t justify it. But they can allow the poor professor to ban laptops and other devices. That would help immensely.

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Colin, a UD reader, reminds UD that the author of the article I’ve linked to was at a tender age diagnosed with “Written Output Disorder,” a condition which made it mandatory that he use laptops in all classrooms. Colin questions the diagnosis, so UD looked it up.

I’m afraid the author of the article is being a bit irresponsible. There are, first of all, at least five kinds of WOD (aka Dysgraphia), and the author would have been more persuasive had he specified his particular subdisorder, since not all seem to necessitate giving up the act of writing with your hands.

Further, experts seem to agree that therapies for all forms of this disorder exist, which suggests that the author’s parents were a mite overhasty when they decided to allow their son – at the age of ten – to abandon the effort to make his fingers form letters.

… and weather so warm we stripped down to one layer.

UD sat in the winter sun well away from the edge as Mr UD followed our guide to the rim.

Light wind. Supremely clear sunlight. Tibetan temples abounding.

The soft shadowy green plateaus looked like Scotland.

Our guide talked about a mountain lion that somehow got itself down to the bottom of the canyon, where there aren’t any elk. It was an object of interest for awhile, but when it began gazing at hotel guests through their windows, it had to be shot.

Plenty of stories too – natch – about mishaps, missteps, mischancings. A woman whose family had to talk her into taking a mule died when the animal had a heart attack and collapsed, throwing her down the canyon. Our guide, last year, witnessed – along with many others – a suicide off the cliff. “He dove. He put his arms out and dove.”

UD watched with amazement as people frolicked inches from the fall.

“What does the Grand Canyon makes you think about?” our guide asked me.

“You know Freud’s theory of the death wish? That.”

Will post this afternoon.