In our continuing coverage of people not likely to be invited to a college campus to speak on ethics, we are thrilled to report that the former Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich will speak on Tuesday at Northwestern University. The event is titled "Ethics in Politics: An evening with Former Governor Rod Blagojevich."

Mr. Blagojevich, you might recall, awaits trial on federal corruption charges for his role in trying to profit from his power to appoint a successor to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. He was removed from office last year.

The College Democrats are sponsoring his visit. —Don Troop

We've all seen advertisements that depict the ugly consequences of alcohol abuse — a smashed-up car, a drunk making a fool of himself, the chalk outline of a pedestrian on the pavement.

Those anti-drinking ads, according to a new study, can actually trigger a defensive coping mechanism that permits people to mentally distance themselves from the serious consequences of drinking too much. And that causes them to drink even more.

"Advertisements are capable of bringing forth feelings so unpleasant that we're compelled to eliminate them by whatever means possible," said Adam Duhachek, an Indiana University marketing professor and co-author of the study. "This motivation is sufficiently strong to convince us we're immune to certain risks."

The effect isn't limited to anti-alcohol ads, Mr. Duhachek says. Ads that use shame or guilt to curb smoking or unprotected sex can also backfire....

Kieran Mullen, a condensed-matter theorist in the University of Oklahoma's department of physics and astronomy, freezes a laptop computer in liquid nitrogen, then smashes it on the floor. A student caught the classroom theatrics on video.

(Editor's note: This was a staged stunt, which is what was implied by the words "classroom theatrics" above.)

Via The Oklahoma Daily

Officials at Tufts University invited aspiring students to submit one-minute videos along with their admissions essays and transcripts. About 1,000 applicants took them up on the offer. 

We had a few thoughts about this:

1. Stop-motion animation is incredibly popular.

2. Is anyone willing to admit not being a geek?

3. Tufts admissions officials must be wondering why they didn't take a cue from the Super Bowl and ask for 15-second spots.

4. Next up: video teaching statements.

5. Two things should never be videotaped. One of them is an application for college admission. —Don Troop

Perhaps because of her deep ties to St. Olaf College, no one should be surprised that Carolyn Amalie Granrud left $1-million to the institution upon her death last November at age 88.

But Ms. Granrud was not your typical million-dollar donor. She lived modestly in a mobile home in San Diego, having begun her career as a social worker in Minnesota before obtaining a degree in library science and working as a librarian and associate professor at San Diego State University. 

Her parents and two siblings were St. Olaf alums, all four of her grandparents taught there, and her father served on the board of regents.

"There were two prominent themes in her life," said her brother, Robert Granrud: "All things Norwegian — St. Olaf College in particular — and reading and learning about the world within the confines of book covers."

Her bequest, in addition to about $300,000 she had given...

We've all been there: First dreaming of a long-anticipated vacation, then enjoying the trip, then returning home to the daily grind and wondering whether it was all worth it. According to a group of researchers in the Netherlands, it probably wasn't.

In a study reported last week in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, the researchers surveyed 974 Dutch vacationers about their levels of happiness before and after taking trips. Before departing, the vacationers reported higher levels of happiness — possibly because of anticipation — compared with 556 people who hadn't vacationed at all. But after the travelers had returned home, they were no happier than those who had stayed put.

"Only a very relaxed holiday trip boosts vacationers’ happiness further after return," the study says.

At least until the credit card bills start to roll in. —Don Troop

A team of researchers at Clemson University's Human-Centered Computing Lab has developed a technology that allows users to speak into a cellphone, then have the message transmitted to another phone as a voice or text message. The new technology, called VoiceTEXT, could negate the need for people to text while driving, a practice that 19 states have outlawed as unsafe.

Ars Technica reports that the hands-free technology connects the speaker to a central server that records the call and, using speech-recognition software, can transcribe the words and deliver them as a text message.

Juan Gilbert, director of Clemson's Human-Centered Computing Lab, says it is unclear why people prefer texting to calling. "The simple answer is we don't really know why," says Mr. Gilbert. "What we do know is that users don't want to call, but want to text."

VoiceTEXT could be coming to your cellphone bill...

Thirty percent of Texas voters believe that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time, and another 30 percent don't know, according to a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll.

A plurality of those polled, 41 percent, know that dinosaurs and humans coexist only at Disney World and in cartoons.

But it goes downhill from there: More than half don't believe that humans developed from earlier species of animals.

The poll, of 800 Texas voters, took place February 1-7 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points. The results were reported on Wednesday by The Texas Tribune. David Prindle, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin, devised the questions. —Don Troop

The student government at Bradley University, we learned from a column this week in the Peoria (ill.) Journal Star, has asked administrators to select a mascot for the institution's sports teams.

Bradley hasn't had a critter to get behind since it dumped its "Bobcat" nickname a decade ago, reports Phil Luciano. Three years ago, he says, efforts to nominate a new mascot fizzled.

"Somehow, after 300 suggestions, the final seven choices included a clock," Mr. Luciano writes. "Seriously. Wow, how scary to the opposition, eh? Outside of a nursing home, time frightens no one."

He suggests a rodent that comes up every time Bradley talks about getting a mascot: the squirrel. Or, as a team nickname, "the Bradley Fighting Squirrels."

We'll do him one better. Squirrels can be terrifying, it's true, but if your name is Bradley, why not become "the Bradley Fighting Vehicles," a nod to the...

A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen electrified the world this week when they announced that they had become the first to reconstruct the genome of an extinct human being.

The researchers analyzed a thick tuft of hair from "Inuk," a hunter-gatherer who lived in northwestern Greenland some 4,000 years ago. From his DNA, they learned many things: He had brown eyes, type A+ blood, shovel-shaped front teeth, and — apparently — a mullet. At least that's what the sketch (above) by Nuka Godfredtsen suggested to a reader named "Skorch" on the social news Web site Reddit. —Don Troop