PONZI SCHEMERS OFTEN DRIVEN BY GREED, LACK OF CONSCIENCE

Florida Times-Union

… Is [UK basketball coach John] Calipari shady? No question. Everybody knows that the two college programs he coached prior to Kentucky — Massachusetts (1996) and Memphis (2008) — both had their Final Four appearances vacated by the NCAA. And, yes, there are already TMZ reports that NCAA investigators are snooping around Kentucky.

Who knows what the NCAA might find.

Agents paying players?

Players with bogus SAT scores?

A university administration that admits athletes who don’t have the academic credentials or desire to be in college?

Sounds about like every other big-time program to me.

The only difference is John Calipari understands that his program is nothing more than an NBA developmental league.

He is at least honest about the dishonesty that contaminates college athletics.

… and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

John Smalls, the guy in charge of finance at South Carolina State University, a public institution, says the school “can definitely account” for it… The 25 million dollars from a federal grant (the entire grant was 50 million) they got over a decade ago to start a transportation research center (nothing’s been done). “The problem is how much detail do you want to see.”‘

How much detail do I, the American taxpayer, want to see?

Well, let’s do it this way. This

is an enormous pile of money.
Imagine, John, that this pile of
money is the 25 million dollars
I and my fellow Americans gave
your school.

I want you to take every single
bill in this pile, hold it aloft, and
say out loud what you did with it.

… at ScienceBlogs.

… reaches its apotheosis.

… James Stoner, chairman of [Louisiana State University’s] political science department, recently taped three 30-minute constitutional lectures for the new “Beck University,” which was announced Monday.

… “I read [Beck’s] use of ‘university’ as ironic or kind of a TV thing,” [said Stoner].

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Read all of UD‘s posts about online education by clicking on this post’s category. Or go here.

… is the title of UD‘s latest post at Inside Higher Ed.

I can’t find this apparently food-obsessed professor listed at Washington State.

A Washington State University faculty member is under arrest for Felony Voyeurism. He’s accused of taking a picture up the shorts of a 21-year-old student.

The student told Pullman Police that she caught 36-year-old Prodyut Kumar taking the picture while she was shopping at Safeway.

Officers were able to get video of Kumar taking the picture from the store’s security cameras. [Did he wait until she was, like, leaning over the apple bins?  Or did he get on the floor and snap her?]

He was arrested at Sunnyside Park during the Pullman Fourth of July Celebration when an officer spotted him. [So many reassuring words – Sunnyside, Safeway… the Pullman Fourth of July Celebration! — revolving around such an untoward event.]

Officers also searched Kumar’s home computer for evidence.

Kumar is listed as a faculty member in the School of Food Sciences. [Can he claim this was part of his research?] He told officers he is a visiting scholar from India.  [I’m finding a Professor Chew at their faculty page, but no Kumar.  Chew teaches ADVANCE HUMAN NUTRITION.  Is that an imperative, or a title?]

SOCIALISTS TO BOYCOTT BURKA VOTE

France’s opposition Socialist Party will refuse to vote on a bill banning full-face cover, the party’s MPs decided on Tuesday ahead of the opening of the parliamentary debate on the much-publicised proposal.

“We are against the burka but we believe that the means chosen to outlaw it are not good,” party leader Martine Aubry said after telling deputies that they should not take part in the vote scheduled for 13 July.

Earlier the Socialists were against passing a law on the question, arguing that the perceived problem is “marginal” and that President Nicolas Sarkozy was exploiting it to continue the “nauseating” debate on national identity.

But, after a year of intense debate and with opinion polls showing support for the move, they have backed away from outright opposition…

That’s it. Instead of at least taking part in the discussion, put your head in a sack and sulk.

I mean, franchement, if you hate the fucker, vote against it. If you think it’s an expression of personal liberty, vote for it. If you’re all je ne sais quoi about it, share your uncertainties in the political arena. Saperlipopette.

UD has written a longish post about Gillian Rose, Christopher Hitchens, and humanism, and sent it off to her other campus at Inside Higher Education. It will appear there at around noon today.

Here’s a link to University Diaries at IHE.

… and this seems right for it.

There’s no smog or honking in this commute. And the only rushing Ty Hopkins hears is the creek flowing alongside him as he pedals up and down the winding canyon roads. Sometimes, his iPod keeps him company, while other times, he quietly soaks up the early morning sun as it trickles through the treetops.

Just a simple morning bike ride.

A “simple” 36.75-mile-with-an-11-mile-uphill-climb-from-American-Fork-to-Provo ride. No biggie.

… [A] 39-year-old father of four girls and an associate professor in exercise science at BYU, [Hopkins] has always been a mountain biking aficionado, but he wasn’t really a cycling fan until he discovered that road bikes offered an incredibly convenient way to combine triathlon training and commuting.

So in the summer, rather than drive the 30 minutes from his American Fork home to his Richards Building office, he bikes it — just call it the 140-minute Alpine Loop extreme nature commute…

Fine, you’ve got to name the place your university’s teams play after the bank or the pizza parlor that paid for it. That’s tacky enough.

But the University of Louisville has taken corporate affiliation to a new level.

Before University of Louisville men’s basketball season-ticket holders started to choose their seats at the new KFC Yum! Center, the university set aside more than 6,000 for corporate sponsors and its own employees, students and friends of the school…

But let’s look closer at the article.

In interviews with more than two dozen [season ticket holders], many complained that they had to pay more to get less — seats higher and further away from mid-court than those they enjoyed at Freedom Hall.

Dr. George Nichols, Kentucky’s former chief medical examiner, said he was so mad at U of L for failing to honor his loyalty to Cardinal basketball that he told his alma mater he would never give it another dime.

Actuary Kenneth Hohman said he was so appalled with the seats available on the day he was to make his pick that he walked out and abandoned the season tickets he had had for 25 years.

“I always thought U of L valued loyalty,” said Hohman, who had asked to buy two seats in the first row of the second tier, “but I guess it’s a one-way street.”

… [A spokesperson] acknowledged that instead of assigning patrons seats that approximated where they sat at Freedom Hall, the school opted to allow people to buy their way into better real estate with additional contributions to the Cardinal Athletic Fund.

As a result, some fans who had supported the basketball program for decades found themselves displaced by Johnnies-come-lately with bigger wallets. University officials said they didn’t know how much fans had donated to procure better seats.

“It is our job to raise money,” [a spokesperson] said, defending the decision. “Certainly people had an opportunity to make additional gifts to improve their position.”…

Nice seat you’ve got there. Pity if anything were to happen to it.

The newspaper finds a sociology professor:

Why is seat selection such a big deal? Jonetta Weber, who teaches a class on the sociology of sport at U of L, where she is also the director of academic services, said that for some, it’s a status symbol.

“We are a society which values economic success, competition and materialism,” said Weber, who hopes to go to a few games with her boyfriend, also a faculty member. “Sitting courtside — or as close to the court as you can get — feeds into those values. We see celebrities courtside at NBA games, and we associate the proximity of their seats to the court with prestige, power and money.”

In fact, “Trial lawyer Gary Weiss … was so angry in May that he threatened to file a class-action suit against the university…”

… to be sure, but the University of Michigan — which pays millions to a negligent president and many more millions to Rich Rodriguez, an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, crooked football coach — seems to be on an even faster schedule than that. Every moment it spins out some new way to get taken.

The latest involves $350 an hour legal fees:

The NCAA investigation into Michigan’s football program has cost the university nearly half million dollars so far, and expenses continue to mount.

According to invoices from the law firm Lightfoot, Franklin and White released this week as part of an open-records request, Michigan has paid $446,951 in legal fees and other expenses since contracting attorney Gene Marsh and others to handle its internal investigation last September.

The payments are for services rendered through April, and do not include a busy May, when the university released its findings and self-imposed penalties in response to the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations.

… Michigan, in a letter dated Sept. 15, 2009, agreed to pay … the former head of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, $350 an hour to lead its investigation. Other attorneys were billed at $300, and paralegals $130 an hour…

Check out the article’s comment thread if you want a sense of the reality on the ground. If UM were a public university in a financially distressed state, this would be a real scandal.

… Fourth of July parade.

This will be a stuttering sort of post. I’ve just pulled my gray Adirondack chair forward to the edge of my driveway and have already been caught up in a long pleasant conversation with Caroline, a new neighbor. She’s British from the sound of her, but has a big ol’ American flag on her porch, a red and white bandanna on her dog, and plenty of excitement about the parade, which will be passing by our houses shortly.

I’ve put bug spray on. I’ve considered topping up the sphagnum on my topiary bulls and rejected the idea. They look okay. I’ve walked the dog and put him inside.

Here’s Mr UD, with some more chairs. “So where are the crowds?” he asks. Garrett Park has three hundred families, and our parades are très Lake Wobegone.

The weather is not hellish!  Amazing.

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Sousa marches are sounding on Kenilworth Avenue!

Mr UD is telling me about a review he just read of the new Porsche Something. “The guy says there are two problems. Everyone is jealous and hates him for having one. And it goes too fast.”

More marches! Closer!

Mr UD says he’s not that excited. “It’s not like Netherlands beating Brazil.”

Mayor in an Audi convertible greets us: “Say hello to the Deputy Mayor.” A dog of course.

Guy in a Nixon mask: “I am not a crook.” (This year’s theme is Our Heroes. I’m confused.)

Firefighters.

Albert Einstein.

Soup kitchens.

Girl Scouts.

Washington Capitals.

… seems to have been fired. Sometimes a person behaves too repellently even for the University of Georgia.

“The Bulldogs [teams] are a brand, and [Athletics Director Damon Evans is] in charge of controlling that, definitely, from the business side. If it was one of the top three or four folks at Delta [Airlines] who did this, you wonder what would happen to them,” [a University of Georgia booster] said.