… diploma mill.

…plagiarism.

In class.

A law professor conducts a study which reveals what we all know: Most students on laptops in class spend most of their time farting around.

“[W]hat causes students to vote with their fingers to ignore us [?]” he asks. He assumes it’s something having to do with us, with professors.

But here’s the thing. Certainly some professors are bores or worse, and students ignore them. Okay. But many professors are reasonably engaging… some are insanely engaging … not as engaging as Joel Osteen (UD‘s in Rehoboth and doing her yearly tv watching) but really quite engaging.

Even less than scintillating, less amiable, professors can, if they’re smart and enthusiastic about their subject, be quite tolerable. I mean, you know, there’s a variety of human personalities out there, and part of the jolt to your system college is supposed to be might include your coming to appreciate the fact that not everyone has to be as chipper as Kathie Lee Gifford to command your attention.

UD, that is, doesn’t think this news about students and laptops and texting should prompt an agonized reappraisal of the way professors do things. She thinks the phenomenon is mainly about the massively online culture which birthed the American college student. College is really the country’s only counter to that culture, being about sustained intellectual focus and real-world verbal interaction.

They love him in Colorado.

The Sydney Morning Herald quotes the vice-chancellor of Macquarie University on acquisitive, amoral universities.

Among his complaints:

… [M]edical researchers lend their names to articles written by drug companies to boost sales. Ghost writing has benefited researchers by giving them additional publications to add to their resumes..

The problem, which has alarmed medical editors in the US, arises when ”publications are the coin of the realm in university scientific careers…”

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He says a university should produce people “who understand the world and their place in it, who can speak coherently, who know what a poem is and who can tell a symphony from a jingle.”

UD leaves today for her annual Rehoboth Beach vacation. (Haven’t read the book I just linked to. Good title.) Blogging, of course, continues as ever.

Here are two current snapshots from Rehoboth:

Yesterday, tons of headless fish washed ashore. (HEADLESS FISH ON TOPLESS BEACH?) This story reminded me of my brief swim, many years ago, in the Baltic waters off Gdansk. Quite a few dead fish there too.

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Lingo’s Market, a Rehoboth landmark where the summer people shop for groceries, is being fought over by the son and daughter of the woman who for many years (she just died, in her nineties) owned and operated it.

The woman seems not to have liked her son. This is from her will:

I make no provisions in this will for my son Archie, except the same amount of love that he showed me after he started living with his French girlfriend, because he has been well provided for. This is because, Archie, you came to me and said, ‘Mother, let me show you how to save money by incorporating Lingo’s Market.’ You incorporated it as ‘Archie Lingo’s Market.’ I trusted you my son, but you used me for [your] own money grubbing ways.

Ooh la la.

Why would anybody pay $675 for convicted swindler Bernie Madoff’s honorary diploma from Yeshiva University? The real question, exclaimed Rich Kroll, slapping his head after he got outbid for the diploma, is why anybody wouldn’t pay it.

“It’s history! It’s the big thing! It’s the biggest thing of the century!” said the anguished Kroll, a North Miami online retailer. “I should have bought it — I should have kept bidding. I dropped out at $600, because I only have $500 in my pocket, but I should have found a way! I wanted it!”

Miami Herald

Marcia Angell, New York Review of Books.

With long-term use of psychoactive drugs, the result is, in the words of Steve Hyman, a former director of the NIMH and until recently provost of Harvard University, “substantial and long-lasting alterations in neural function.” As quoted by Whitaker, the brain, Hyman wrote, begins to function in a manner “qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.” After several weeks on psychoactive drugs, the brain’s compensatory efforts begin to fail, and side effects emerge that reflect the mechanism of action of the drugs… The episodes of mania caused by antidepressants may lead to a new diagnosis of “bipolar disorder” and treatment with a “mood stabilizer,” such as Depokote (an anticonvulsant) plus one of the newer antipsychotic drugs. And so on.

Some patients take as many as six psychoactive drugs daily. One well- respected researcher, Nancy Andreasen, and her colleagues published evidence that the use of antipsychotic drugs is associated with shrinkage of the brain, and that the effect is directly related to the dose and duration of treatment. As Andreasen explained to The New York Times, “The prefrontal cortex doesn’t get the input it needs and is being shut down by drugs. That reduces the psychotic symptoms. It also causes the prefrontal cortex to slowly atrophy.”

Getting off the drugs is exceedingly difficult, according to Whitaker, because when they are withdrawn the compensatory mechanisms are left unopposed. When Celexa is withdrawn, serotonin levels fall precipitously because the presynaptic neurons are not releasing normal amounts and the postsynaptic neurons no longer have enough receptors for it. Similarly, when an antipsychotic is withdrawn, dopamine levels may skyrocket. The symptoms produced by withdrawing psychoactive drugs are often confused with relapses of the original disorder, which can lead psychiatrists to resume drug treatment, perhaps at higher doses.

Angell’s review of three books about psychoactive drugs and depression suggests that for the most part the pills don’t work, and are (see above) positively dangerous.

And what’s this got to do with universities? High-profile professors of psychiatry all over this country, some of them paid by drug companies, legitimize the use of these pills by millions and millions of Americans, including very small children.

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UD thanks MattF for the link.

… the disgusting, injurious corruption of medical knowledge in America.

[T]he $310 billion pharmaceutical industry quietly buys … the contents of medical journals and, all too often, the trajectory of medical research itself.

[Continuing medical education courses are] pedagogic playdates [that] familiarize doctors with pharmaceutical companies’ patented products to the exclusion of cheaper and sometimes safer and more effective alternatives.

[A Canadian bioethicist says:] “Many psychiatric medications are little more than placebos, yet many clinicians have come to believe that SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a newer class of antidepressants] drugs are magic, all through the suppression of negative studies.”

[Another observer calls much of the content of our medical journals] “little better than infomercials.”

[At least] 50 …Elsevier journals appear to be Big Pharma advertisements passed off as medical publications.

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UD thanks Adam for the link.

First the double dipping couple; now this guy (still proudly claimed by his robbee), who seems to have stolen from the school this way and that way and this way and that way. And this way.

Kangari got reimbursed for more than $10,000 worth of trips to Las Vegas and Los Angeles where he and his family visited tourist attractions. The auditor called them “thinly veiled family vacations with no verifiable business purpose.” … “[I]nappropriate purchases” on his P-card [included] nearly $1,000 worth of textbooks, which matched his daughter’s class schedule, sent to him via email. He also bought nearly $4,000 worth of electronics, including a pink iPod Shuffle…. [According to school auditors,] “he was not even present at some of the events for which he requested reimbursement.” At some he said he sent his wife in his place. The audit also said Kangari falsified timesheets for an employee, costing the school an additional $1,800.

Gevalt.

Emanuelle Degli Esposti in The New Statesman:

… Italy is the only Western European country where the number of intellectuals leaving the country so grossly outweighs those coming in. The fact that a wealthy, developed nation with such a rich cultural history is being slowly leeched of its talent is a highly troubling development.

Because the sad truth of the matter is that the system that has failed its own people also fails to attract new talent to its shores. High levels of corruption, low spending on academic research and a convoluted and frustrating bureaucratic system mean that foreign brains end up looking elsewhere.

They just hired Cory Pickens.

The CEO who hired him “decided not to disclose Pickens’ background when announcing the hire.”

Yeah. I mean, why tell the community that he’s a recovering Oxycontin, oxycodone and hydrocodone addict who’s just been convicted of prescription fraud? That might make people reluctant to use his anesthesiology services.

… uh whatever. You know. The latest shit.

Oh yeah. Ohio State.

… [T]his entire exercise is part of the grand hypocrisy that defines the N.C.A.A.

… [T]he only ones in this con game who can make money are the coaches, the athletics directors and the bowl officials.

… The [big-time college sports] beast devours coaches, administrators and college presidents, and enjoys a steady diet of athletes who help generate the revenue that has turned college sports into a billion-dollar industry.

Beer vote is a-comin’
Our Bud is in sight
Beer vote is a-comin’
There’s dancin’ tonight

Why don’t-cha chuga chuga chuga Bud
Why don’t-cha chuga chuga chuga Bud

Look here! The beer vote is a-comin’
There’s dancin’ tonight

Coach is at the Cross Lanes
To show us the way
Coach is at the Cross Lanes
It’s a shiny new day…

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UPDATE: Hyuk!

Because if there was one thing some WVU fans weren’t already, it was drunk enough… [The athletic director] said the sale of beer… would, and I quote, “improve fan behavior”.

[He] also mentioned beer sales could provide around $500,000 in revenue for the program (ah, there we go).

… Temple University, has allegedly spent the last twelve years stealing from a children’s hospital.