Posts by Don Troop
February 13, 2012, 12:04 PM ET
Can't Write a Good Mash Note? Ask a Student to Help.
A video from Emory University (below) suggests that, "in the age of
texts, Facebook, and email, the art of the love letter is fading
fast." Perhaps that's true in Georgia, but at Minnesota State
University at Mankato, creative-writing and MFA students have
spent the past few days composing Valentine's Day notes,
letters, and poems for romantically challenged people willing to
pay a small fee. The money will help cover lodging costs for
students attending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs
conference in Chicago.
Read More
December 9, 2011, 02:47 PM ET
Today's Special: Damaged Art, and a Theory About Its Worth
Most people aren’t interested in buying damaged artwork, but a
philosophy professor at Davidson College has a banged-up
painting that he thinks might be an exception to that rule. The
professor, Paul Studtmann, will test his hunch tonight. A few
months ago, Mr. Studtmann acquired an acrylic-on-wood painting
called "Falling Down Man," which depicts a disheveled
marionette lying on a city street. The artist, Charlie Spear,
mailed it from Indianapolis to North Carolina, where Mr. Studtmann
lives. But when the professor went to the post office to retrieve
it, he was handed a package that seemed to have been abused. “I
took it out of the box and thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’”
Mr. Studtmann recalls. The painting’s steel frame was severely
bent, and part of the wood beneath the paint had cracked.
He called Mr. Spear and
e-mailed him photos of the damaged artwork...
Read More
He called Mr. Spear and
e-mailed him photos of the damaged artwork...
Read More
November 17, 2011, 01:08 PM ET
Man Busted for Growing Pot to Pay Off Student Loans
A Massachusetts man, Michael A. Vivenzio, was sentenced last month
to 2½ years in prison for his role in a sophisticated
marijuana-growing operation in Portland, Ore. According to
an article in The Oregonian, Mr. Vivenzio told
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas H. Edmonds that he moved to Oregon
and got into the pot business because he had racked up some
$100,000 in student loans. Portland vice officers seized a total of
831 plants from Mr. Vivenzio's home and two others where he and an
associate, Jason J. Kalenkowitz, were growing marijuana.
Investigators arrested Mr. Vivenzio last year at his home, seizing
a loaded 9mm pistol that was hidden in his sofa. They also seized
$72,000 in cash from Mr. Kalenkowitz, who was sentenced to more
than four years in prison, and $27,000 from Mr. Vivenzio. According
to The Oregonian, the IRS reported that Mr. Vivenzio had
managed to pay down $80,000 in...
Read More
October 4, 2011, 03:53 PM ET
'The Only Reason to Win a Nobel': Free Parking
Never mind the respect of one's peers and the shared $1.5-million
cash award. Saul Perlmutter, the University of California scientist
who was named today as one of three winners of the Nobel Prize
in Physics, revealed the other great thing about the
honor: one of the free parking spaces that Berkeley gives its
Nobel laureates. "Which of course is the only reason to win a Nobel
Prize, to be able to park on campus," Mr. Perlmutter
joked in an interview with the Associated Press. Mr. Perlmutter
shared the Nobel with Brian P. Schmidt, of the Australian National
University, and Adam G. Riess, of the Johns Hopkins University's
Space Telescope Science Institute, for their "discovery of the
accelerating expansion of the universe through observations" of
supernovas, according to a
citation from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. No word
yet on whether Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Riess will also ...
Read More
August 30, 2011, 02:42 PM ET
Professor Abandons His Eternal Search for a Parking Space
Danford W. Middlemiss is done
looking for parking at Canada's Dalhousie University. After waiting
in line for more than an hour on Monday to purchase a parking pass
— only to learn that all the passes had been sold and that he would
have to return the next day — the political-science professor
pulled the plug on his career of 31 years,
according to an article on the CBC News Web site. "I went
straight upstairs, I said, 'I'm not kidding this time, I don't have
to put up with this. I'm resigning,'" said Mr. Middlemiss.
Dalhousie, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, reportedly has 2,000 parking
spaces for 17,000 students and 3,000 employees. It has
traditionally oversold parking passes by 65 percent, meaning that
they function more as hunting licenses than as parking permits.
This year, however, the university was going to cap its overselling
at 20 to 30 percent and add 200 guaranteed spots for...
Read More
April 21, 2011, 02:13 PM ET
Tell Your Students That if They Cheat, God Will Smite Them
Is God: A) punitive, angry, and vengeful? B) warm, loving, and
forgiving? OK, folks, pencils down. Now, if you chose B, you
probably cheated your way through college. Two psychology
researchers — Azim F. Shariff, at the University of Oregon,
and Ara Norenzayan, at the University of British Columbia —
found
in a pair of studies that students who believe that God is kind
and gentle are more likely to cheat on tests. In the first study,
61 undergraduates were asked to take a mathematics test on a
computer that contained a software glitch. If they failed to press
the space bar immediately after reading each problem, the glitch
would cause the correct answer to appear on the screen and that
just wouldn't be fair. After taking the test, the
students were asked about their perceptions of God. Of course the
sneaky researchers — believers in a benevolent God, no doubt — had
peeked ...
Read More
March 14, 2011, 02:14 PM ET
March Geekiness: Tell Us Your Arbitrary NCAA Picks
The NCAA has released the
tournament brackets for the 2011 Division I men's basketball
championship, so
Tweed Madness is on: Tell us in the comments which team is
going to win which matchup — the more obscure your reasoning, the
better. We'll give you our own Final Four picks in a moment, but
first, an obligatory academic digression. Minutes after our
announcement went out on Friday, friends started reminding us about
other geeky approaches to bracketology: * Richard Lapchick,
director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for
Diversity and Ethics in Sport, compiles one that highlights which
tournament teams do the best job of graduating
their players. * The Center for Responsive Politics offers the
K Street College Classic (which our colleague Sara Hebel
noted a
couple years ago), awarding victory to whichever college spends
the most money lobbying the federal...
Read More
February 2, 2011, 03:11 PM ET
James Franco as College Course
James Franco has been many
things: a movie actor, a soap star, a film director, a painter,
and a grad student (at four universities, all at the same time!).
Now,
according to a press release, the irrepressible Mr. Franco is
both a college course and one of the instructors:
Academy Award-nominated actor James Franco has partnered with Columbia College Hollywood to offer an innovative course through which 12 of the private film school’s best editing students will create a 30 minute documentary film from videographic footage from Mr. Franco’s own unorthodox career."Master Class: Editing James Franco…with James Franco" breaks new ground in higher education. Can anyone recall another course where the professor is also the subject of study? Read More
October 6, 2010, 02:50 PM ET
His Presidential Bid Thwarted, Wyclef Jean Accepts Brown U. Fellowship
It's been a big
year for musicians in academe. First Steve Miller takes a job
at the University of Southern California. Then Todd Rundgren gets a
guest gig at Indiana University.
Now comes word that the hip-hop star and recently
rejected candidate for the Haitian presidency, Wyclef Jean, is
joining Brown University as a visiting fellow in Africana studies
in 2010-2011. His appointment is part of Brown's recently announced
Haitian
Initiative. Mr. Jean, a Haitian native who was raised in
northern New Jersey, "will attend various campus Haitian Initiative
events, including lectures, faculty conversations, classes and
other offerings," according to a press release
from Brown.
Read More
 Wyclef Jean (right)
meets Bryan Maina, a Brown U. sophomore. (Mike Cohea/Brown
U.) |
October 5, 2010, 05:30 PM ET
Video Wednesday
Four biochemistry Ph.D. students at the University of California at San Francisco shot this clever parody of the Flight of the Conchords' "Most Beautiful Girl (in the Room)" for a skit show at their program's annual science retreat. Who else could find a rhyme for "centrifuge"?
The folks at Improbable Research, the organization that handed out last week's Ig Nobels, invites people to submit a limerick that imagines what Dmitri Mendeleev might have thought of this video about the periodic table.
A local television news affiliate in Pennsylvania reports on the assault of a student at Grove City College by a man dressed as a panda. As of Monday, the panda was still at large.
Send your video links to tweed@chronicle.com
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Tweed is The Chronicle's blog about the lighter side of academe. Don Troop investigates higher education's odd characters and amusing nooks.