(THE WILD, THE INNOCENT, & THE E-STREET) NOTES FROM A FRIDAY AFTERNOON
shagging the flies of my mind.
For your consideration: another curious collection
of thoughts, reactions, and observations that didn't make it into a full-length
post this week. So they're sort of like all those white t-shirts the Penguins
are giving out at the arena tonight. Except that these come in different
sizes...
• Now that the investigative panel for the WVU MBA scandal has released its final report and -- shocker -- determined that well-connected Mylan Exec Heather Bresch did not actually earn her degree and -- imagine that -- revealed that high-ranking university and business school administrators allowed it, attempted to cover it up, and still can't bring themselves to acknowledge either the errors of their ways or the bankruptcy of their ethics, the next course of action should be clear: everyone who attended that fateful meeting and contributed to this farce should either be fired or forced to resign. That includes WVU President Michael Garrison, Provost Gerald Lang, and Business School Dean R. Stephen Sears. They all bear responsibility for this despicable breach of academic integrity -- there should be a special place in Academic Hell for Lang and Spears, who both refuse to apologize and say they would do the same thing again -- and thus have they sacrificed every last ounce of respect or honor ever them. It's an embarrassment and an outrage, and it should -- swiftly, and decisively -- be treated as such.
• Though a scandal of this magnitude is mercifully rare, do not kid yourself into thinking that these sorts of things -- the sad and sordid bartering of both influence and favoritism, the willful and capricious disregarding of both merit and process -- do not happen all the time. They are standard operating procedure at all levels of academia, and they seem especially at home -- if not especially surprising -- at the ethically challenged intersection of business and education.
• Think I'm exaggerating? Read this book. And then talk to people who've been there, and who are oh-so-glad to have escaped.
• To phony and hypocrite we can now add schizophrenic to the list of Barack Obama descriptors. Consider this claim he made yesterday: We think that, in the end, if we end up having won twice as many states and having the most votes, then we should be the nominee. Unless he's including Lady McBama -- and Lord help us if he is -- then someone needs to remind the Senator that, no matter the size of his ego, he is still only one person.
• By the time the convention rolls around, I imagine he'll want to be his own running mate. And, not long after that, all of his own cabinet picks too.
• Here's an interesting email, in response to yesterday's Clinton-Voters-Are-Apparently-Unthinking-Racists post, from someone we'll call Ms. A.: Seriously, if we’re going to stereotype the entire state with one broad-stroke brush, I can do it too: Pennsylvanians are nothing if not pragmatic, with a preference for experience and a resistance to sparkly rhetoric. If you ask me, they have looked at the emperor and, thanks to a healthy dose of skepticism, have seen that he's not wearing any clothes. (Look at that, I didn't even have to bring up that Hillary Clinton has surely lost votes based on her gender, or that racists are often also sexists and wouldn’t like either candidate.)
• TWM Comment Thread Comment of the Week Award goes to my esteemed Carbolic Smoke Ball colleague, the Hon. Judge Rufus Peckham, for this dead-on assessment of both the (ahem) Jan Beatty controversy and the intellectually bankrupt culture out of which it crawls: We are stranded in an era of the perpetually indignant, the chronically offended, where self-proclaimed victims hide behind shibboleths of political correctness, such as “censorship,” or “academic freedom,” in an attempt to justify some supposed outrage or other that they’ve manufactured. And frequently, of course, these purported injured parties don’t care a whit that the thing they are crying “censorship” over would be an affront to someone else’s sensibilities.
• One last note on this subject: It always amuses me when people of great position and privilege, in an era and a country that provide more and better opportunities to be heard than any in the history of the world, cry Censorship! the moment one thought or idea or (in this case) reasonable business decision go against them. Not being allowed to speak your mind in public, or to your government, or in your own home, is censorship. Not being allowed to write or to publish or to distribute your work is censorship. Not being given a microphone to read your poetry aloud in a privately owned bookstore is not censorship, it's not discrimination, and it's not even an insult. It's a choice and a right and, in this case, especially given Ms. Beatty's irrationality, a pretty wise move.
• Maybe I lampooned too soon. It turns out that Twitter can spring you from an Egyptian jail cell. Sort of. In a round-about way. Just like any text-message can. So it's not really a big deal. But, hey, CNN thinks it is.
• I've been meaning to make this recommendation for a while now, but... if you like good, award-winning southern barbeque in a laid-back, might-even-imagine-you-were-in-Georgia-or-Florida atmosphere, check out Famous Dave's. There are two locations here in Pittsburgh (Waterworks, North Hills) and many more across the country. Well-worth your time and taste buds, I assure you.
• The people who designed the self-checkout technology in use at Giant Eagle could surely learn something from the people who designed the self-checkout technology in use at Home Depot. Even if I'm only buying three things at the Eagle, it takes me five minutes to get through the process, thanks to technology that seems to be powered by a combination of 386s and gerbils on treadmills. If I only have three items at Home Depot, I'm in and out so fast the security cameras have barely had time to register my existence.
• And don't even get me started on the accuracy and efficiency of the weight sensors. I can buy a couple of two-by-fours, a can of paint, and a twopenny nail, and the Home Depot sensors pick 'em all up and send me on my merry way. But try to buy a bottle of soda and a couple of sprigs of rosemary at Giant Eagle, and you'll be in line for six weeks, waiting for some slack-jawed customer-service-tron to reset your register.
• Interesting trailer for a new movie called Quarantine. Though they might want to consider changing the title to The Cloverfield Witch Project. Just to be fair.
• Just when my Love-Hate relationship with Pens Coach Michael Therrien was tilting so close to Love, along comes this little tidbit: Therrien plans to reconfigure two of his defense pairings. The Brooks Orpik-Sergei Gonchar unit will remain intact, but Hal Gill will play with Rob Scuderi and Kris Letang will be alongside Ryan Whitney. I'm speechless. The pairings have been playing together for over a month, performing brilliantly and complementing each other perfectly. Your team has been hotter than hell in that time, and you've just come off a sweep of the defending Eastern Conference champs. Yeah. That sounds like a good time to change things up a little bit.
• And, finally... Because, unlike -- tilting back toward Hate! -- Michael Therrien, I know better than to mess with success. Especially when we're about to start the second round of the playoffs. So... LET'S GO, PENS!
• Now that the investigative panel for the WVU MBA scandal has released its final report and -- shocker -- determined that well-connected Mylan Exec Heather Bresch did not actually earn her degree and -- imagine that -- revealed that high-ranking university and business school administrators allowed it, attempted to cover it up, and still can't bring themselves to acknowledge either the errors of their ways or the bankruptcy of their ethics, the next course of action should be clear: everyone who attended that fateful meeting and contributed to this farce should either be fired or forced to resign. That includes WVU President Michael Garrison, Provost Gerald Lang, and Business School Dean R. Stephen Sears. They all bear responsibility for this despicable breach of academic integrity -- there should be a special place in Academic Hell for Lang and Spears, who both refuse to apologize and say they would do the same thing again -- and thus have they sacrificed every last ounce of respect or honor ever them. It's an embarrassment and an outrage, and it should -- swiftly, and decisively -- be treated as such.
• Though a scandal of this magnitude is mercifully rare, do not kid yourself into thinking that these sorts of things -- the sad and sordid bartering of both influence and favoritism, the willful and capricious disregarding of both merit and process -- do not happen all the time. They are standard operating procedure at all levels of academia, and they seem especially at home -- if not especially surprising -- at the ethically challenged intersection of business and education.
• Think I'm exaggerating? Read this book. And then talk to people who've been there, and who are oh-so-glad to have escaped.
• To phony and hypocrite we can now add schizophrenic to the list of Barack Obama descriptors. Consider this claim he made yesterday: We think that, in the end, if we end up having won twice as many states and having the most votes, then we should be the nominee. Unless he's including Lady McBama -- and Lord help us if he is -- then someone needs to remind the Senator that, no matter the size of his ego, he is still only one person.
• By the time the convention rolls around, I imagine he'll want to be his own running mate. And, not long after that, all of his own cabinet picks too.
• Here's an interesting email, in response to yesterday's Clinton-Voters-Are-Apparently-Unthinking-Racists post, from someone we'll call Ms. A.: Seriously, if we’re going to stereotype the entire state with one broad-stroke brush, I can do it too: Pennsylvanians are nothing if not pragmatic, with a preference for experience and a resistance to sparkly rhetoric. If you ask me, they have looked at the emperor and, thanks to a healthy dose of skepticism, have seen that he's not wearing any clothes. (Look at that, I didn't even have to bring up that Hillary Clinton has surely lost votes based on her gender, or that racists are often also sexists and wouldn’t like either candidate.)
• TWM Comment Thread Comment of the Week Award goes to my esteemed Carbolic Smoke Ball colleague, the Hon. Judge Rufus Peckham, for this dead-on assessment of both the (ahem) Jan Beatty controversy and the intellectually bankrupt culture out of which it crawls: We are stranded in an era of the perpetually indignant, the chronically offended, where self-proclaimed victims hide behind shibboleths of political correctness, such as “censorship,” or “academic freedom,” in an attempt to justify some supposed outrage or other that they’ve manufactured. And frequently, of course, these purported injured parties don’t care a whit that the thing they are crying “censorship” over would be an affront to someone else’s sensibilities.
• One last note on this subject: It always amuses me when people of great position and privilege, in an era and a country that provide more and better opportunities to be heard than any in the history of the world, cry Censorship! the moment one thought or idea or (in this case) reasonable business decision go against them. Not being allowed to speak your mind in public, or to your government, or in your own home, is censorship. Not being allowed to write or to publish or to distribute your work is censorship. Not being given a microphone to read your poetry aloud in a privately owned bookstore is not censorship, it's not discrimination, and it's not even an insult. It's a choice and a right and, in this case, especially given Ms. Beatty's irrationality, a pretty wise move.
• Maybe I lampooned too soon. It turns out that Twitter can spring you from an Egyptian jail cell. Sort of. In a round-about way. Just like any text-message can. So it's not really a big deal. But, hey, CNN thinks it is.
• I've been meaning to make this recommendation for a while now, but... if you like good, award-winning southern barbeque in a laid-back, might-even-imagine-you-were-in-Georgia-or-Florida atmosphere, check out Famous Dave's. There are two locations here in Pittsburgh (Waterworks, North Hills) and many more across the country. Well-worth your time and taste buds, I assure you.
• The people who designed the self-checkout technology in use at Giant Eagle could surely learn something from the people who designed the self-checkout technology in use at Home Depot. Even if I'm only buying three things at the Eagle, it takes me five minutes to get through the process, thanks to technology that seems to be powered by a combination of 386s and gerbils on treadmills. If I only have three items at Home Depot, I'm in and out so fast the security cameras have barely had time to register my existence.
• And don't even get me started on the accuracy and efficiency of the weight sensors. I can buy a couple of two-by-fours, a can of paint, and a twopenny nail, and the Home Depot sensors pick 'em all up and send me on my merry way. But try to buy a bottle of soda and a couple of sprigs of rosemary at Giant Eagle, and you'll be in line for six weeks, waiting for some slack-jawed customer-service-tron to reset your register.
• Interesting trailer for a new movie called Quarantine. Though they might want to consider changing the title to The Cloverfield Witch Project. Just to be fair.
• Just when my Love-Hate relationship with Pens Coach Michael Therrien was tilting so close to Love, along comes this little tidbit: Therrien plans to reconfigure two of his defense pairings. The Brooks Orpik-Sergei Gonchar unit will remain intact, but Hal Gill will play with Rob Scuderi and Kris Letang will be alongside Ryan Whitney. I'm speechless. The pairings have been playing together for over a month, performing brilliantly and complementing each other perfectly. Your team has been hotter than hell in that time, and you've just come off a sweep of the defending Eastern Conference champs. Yeah. That sounds like a good time to change things up a little bit.
• And, finally... Because, unlike -- tilting back toward Hate! -- Michael Therrien, I know better than to mess with success. Especially when we're about to start the second round of the playoffs. So... LET'S GO, PENS!
Posted: Fri - April 25, 2008 at 01:11 PM
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Published On: Apr 26, 2008 01:32 PM
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Published On: Apr 26, 2008 01:32 PM