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(Tenured Radical)

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

A REAL WINNER

Robert Schrieffer, a distinguished American scientist and longtime professor, is about to go to state prison for having killed one person and injured seven with his new Mercedes, which he was driving at one hundred miles an hour at the time.

Professor Schrieffer loves to do this sort of thing. His many speeding tickets finally impelled the authorities to suspend his license, though this didn’t discourage him from buying a late-model sports car and killing people with it. "It's a puzzle why you decided to drive high-performance cars at great speeds on public highways," said the judge, who seemed confused as to why “a bright man who has made great contributions to society” could also do things like this. But a relative of one of the victims nailed it easily: "Mr. Schrieffer is a very intelligent man with no respect for the legal system."



“The defendant, who spoke cheerfully to his attorneys and a reporter prior to the hearing," a local paper reports, "did not look at the family members as they spoke.” In his official statement of apology, he wept and said he felt their pain.

“Schrieffer initially told investigators that he was a victim in the accident, and that a truck hauling a trailer had clipped his car and the van, according to the CHP. That story was never corroborated, and Schrieffer eventually admitted inventing the truck, Mestman said, adding that the defendant later expressed remorse for his actions.”



Oh, I meant to mention. Schrieffer got the Nobel Prize a few years ago. The least the Nobel people could do would be to add this information to the glowing biography of him they provide on their website.

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UPDATE: If Professor Schrieffer’s guilt or innocence was still in question; if he didn’t have a long record ending with a suspended license on which he was driving when he killed and maimed people; if the judge hadn’t been so appalled by his victims’ suffering that he recommended harder jail time … then maybe UD could see Florida State University coming up with this as its official statement to its staff, a statement subsequently quoted in the media:

Greg Boebinger, director of the mag lab, notified staff members of new legal developments in Schrieffer's case in an e-mail Tuesday. "This is a very sad time. Bob Schrieffer will apparently be sentenced to serve time in connection with an automobile collision in California late last year," Boebinger wrote. "This is a terrible human tragedy, for the victims of the collision and their families as well as for Bob and his family."



Um, collision? Schrieffer ploughed into an innocent car. Sad for FSU? No. Embarrassing, in that the university has been harboring and honoring this man even though it knew what he was like. A tragedy for Bob? No. A belated reckoning with justice. I trust FSU has been offering counseling for this man during the years it has known of his problem…

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MORE REACTION TO THE SCHRIEFFER CONVICTION:

“Professor Leon N. Cooper of Brown University, who shared the Nobel Prize with Schrieffer in 1972, said he was stunned to hear of Schrieffer's problems. 'It is the kind of nightmare that everyone worries about,' Cooper said."


Really? Driving your uninsured Mercedes on a suspended license at one hundred miles an hour into a van packed with people?


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THINGS HAPPEN QUICKLY AROUND HERE

It’s August 11, Professor Schrieffer doesn’t yet know whether he’s going to a real or a country club jail, and already he's past-tense pop-culture shorthand. From an article in yesterday’s Village Voice about new video games:


The New York Times' Matt Richtel was probably right in taking MADDEN NFL 2006 to task for not having enough brand new features to rationalize the $50 price tag. Yet if you're a football nut in the way embattled Nobel Prize Winner John Robert Schrieffer was nutty about theories of superconductivity, you just have to have the game.