This is one of the other big topics of discussion when Professor Greg Joseph and I meet for lunch. USC’s the worst (or at least we think so), although some of the other universities mentioned here are right up there. At New York Times , ” How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life “: IT was a great day to be a Buckeye. Josh Samuels, a junior from Cincinnati, dates his decision to attend Ohio State to Nov. 10, 2007, and the chill he felt when the band took the field during a football game against Illinois. “I looked over at my brother and I said, ‘I’m going here. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.’ ” (Even though Illinois won, 28-21.) Tim Collins, a junior who is president of Block O, the 2,500-member student fan organization, understands the rush. “It’s not something I usually admit to, that I applied to Ohio State 60 percent for the sports. But the more I do tell that to people, they’ll say it’s a big reason why they came, too.” Ohio State boasts 17 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, three Nobel laureates, eight Pulitzer Prize winners, 35 Guggenheim Fellows and a MacArthur winner. But sports rule. “It’s not, ‘Oh, yeah, Ohio State, that wonderful physics department.’ It’s football,” said Gordon Aubrecht, an Ohio State physics professor. Last month, Ohio State hired Urban Meyer to coach football for $4 million a year plus bonuses (playing in the B.C.S. National Championship game nets him an extra $250,000; a graduation rate over 80 percent would be worth $150,000). He has personal use of a private jet. Dr. Aubrecht says he doesn’t have enough money in his own budget to cover attendance at conferences. “From a business perspective,” he can see why Coach Meyer was hired, but he calls the package just more evidence that the “tail is wagging the dog.” Dr. Aubrecht is not just another cranky tenured professor. Hand-wringing seems to be universal these days over big-time sports, specifically football and men’s basketball. Sounding much like his colleague, James J. Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan and author of “Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University,” said this: “Nine of 10 people don’t understand what you are saying when you talk about research universities. But you say ‘Michigan’ and they understand those striped helmets running under the banner.” For good or ill, big-time sports has become the public face of the university, the brand that admissions offices sell, a public-relations machine thanks to ESPN exposure. At the same time, it has not been a good year for college athletics. Child abuse charges against a former Penn State assistant football coach brought down the program’s legendary head coach and the university’s president. Not long after, allegations of abuse came to light against an assistant basketball coach at Syracuse University. Combine that with the scandals over boosters showering players with cash and perks at Ohio State and, allegedly, the University of Miami and a glaring power gap becomes apparent between the programs and the institutions that house them. “There is certainly a national conversation going on now that I can’t ever recall taking place,” said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system and co-director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. “We’ve reached a point where big-time intercollegiate athletics is undermining the integrity of our institutions, diverting presidents and institutions from their main purpose.” RTWT.
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Big-Time Sports Have Become the Public Face of American Universities
Amphipods, a type of crustacean whose body is divided into 13 segments, are generally less than 10 millimeters — 0.39 inch — in length. Now, imagine the surprise scientists had when they found some 20 times that size. Scientists at the University of Aberdeen have announced finding amphipods so big that drawing the analogy between humans and the Incredible Hulk isn’t even a big enough comparison. They’re so giant, they are being called “supergiant”. OurAmazingPlanet reports that the “insects of the sea” were found in a deep sea trench off the coast of New Zealand: “We pulled up the trap, and lying among the fish were these absolutely massive amphipods, and there was no inkling whatsoever that these things should be there,” said Alan Jamieson, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and leader of the expedition that turned up the fantastical creatures in November 2011. “They actually don’t feel real,” Jamieson told OurAmazingPlanet. “They feel like plastic toys. They have a waxy texture to them.” OurAmazingPlanet notes that the largest of the amphipods found was nearly a foot long.
(Photo: University of Aberdeen Oceanlab)
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‘Supergiant’ Crustacean 20 Times Larger Than Usual Surprise Scientists
With only three days left before the team of researchers drilling into a 20-million-year-old lake under 13,000 feet of Antarctic ice, radio communication has gone silent on their end.
Lake Vostok in Antarctica is buried under 13,000 feet of ice and is about the size of Lake Ontario.
Satellite image of Lake Vostok. (Image via Daily Mail)
Supplies traveling to the Vostok Antarctic research station. (Image via Daily Mail)
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Radio Silence From Researchers Drilling Into 20-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake
Has the answer to a quick, painless, reversible male contraceptive been in doctors’ offices and commercially available for decades? One study says yes. Therapeutic ultrasounds machines, which are currently used to relieve injured joints with heat, according to the study by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill researchers, could someday be a viable form of contraceptives for men. According to the press release, the researchers were able to reduce sperm counts for a long period of time — two and a half months — in rats by giving the rodents’ testicles just two 15 minute doses of the ultrasound heat.
The seminiferous tubule on the left is from a testis that was not treated with ultrasound while the tubule on the right is from a testis that was treated with ultrasound. Note that the tubule from the control testis has many darkly stained germ cell nuclei. In contrast, the ultrasound-treated tubule is completely lacking testicular sperm and has lost almost all immature germ cells. (Photo: James Tsuruta/ Paul Dayton)
This ultrasound unit was used in the rat study. (Image: NewMaleContraction.org)
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Birth Control for Men? Zap Testicles With a Dose of Ultrasound Heat
**Written by Doug Powers The ultimate goal is to clone Al Gore to serve as a weatherman at every local television station so he can offer the patented Hypocrite-Cast
Tebow-mania subsided substantially since Tom Brady and the New England Patriots crushed the Denver Broncos’ hopes for a fairytale trip to the Super Bowl. But that isn’t stopping Tim watchers. Now they’re turning their collective attention to the next-best obsession: A storybook ending in the quarterback’s personal life. As in…does he have a girlfriend? Tebow says no . The outspoken Christian and acknowledged virgin says he’s “too busy with football and life…I am blessed to have a close-knit [group] around me. I love meeting and talking with people, socializing and hanging out. But people can read it the wrong way.” Tebow notes that “leading girls on” is definitely not in his playbook. “I always want to be very careful about that,” he says. “That is one thing that’s a little frustrating.” So with the gossip mill linking him ad nauseum with newly single icons such as Olympic champion skier Lindsey Vonn and pop superstar Katy Perry , it’s refreshing to learn of Tebow’s real-life friendship with brain-tumor survivor Kelly Faughn. ”I just think he’s great, a really nice guy,” said Kelly, 22, of Clifton, Va., who still deals with hearing loss suffered at birth and a tremor that began when she was 12. “It’s just his faith. We are God-friends.” It all started in 2009 after Kelly’s surgery to remove a benign brain tumor and a much-needed trip to Disney World in Orlando with her family. The bonus was that Tebow, then with the University of Florida, was scheduled to attend ESPN’s College Football Awards at Disney. Since Kelly was a big Tim fan, she and her dad, Jim, hatched their plan. They grabbed a spot in the ESPN Zone restaurant the day before the awards, Kelly wearing her “I Love Timmy” button and hoping to catch a glimpse of Tebow as he walked by — and she did. “ Well , I thought, that’s it ,” Jim said. “We got a wave from Timmy and I thought that was the end of it. Then, somebody came to our table and asked if we wanted to meet Timmy.” Silly question. Kelly was whisked into a private banquet room where Kelly was seated at Tebow’s side, chatting with him during the entire dinner. Then Tebow had another surprise in store, Kelly remembered. “He said, ‘What are you doing tomorrow night? Why don’t you come to the awards dinner as my date?’” Kelly said. “I was shocked. I said yes. I felt like Cinderella.” Without much more than T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops in her suitcase, Kelly spent the next day “power shopping” and getting her hair done. “I felt like I was in heaven,” Kelly said. Kelly and Tebow have stayed in touch since their whirlwind date, exchanging messages and gifts. Kelly sent him a box of nutrition bars, and Tebow sent her an engraved Bible for Christmas. The family has also attended two games, including one in Denver last month arranged by the Tim Tebow Foundation .
Kelly chats with Tebow before last December's game.
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This Is a ‘Who Is Tim Tebow Dating?’ Story That You Will Really Like
AP – Fuzzy math, Illinois State University’s president called it. “Political theater of the worst sort,” said the University of Washington’s head.
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College presidents wary of Obama cost-control plan
(AP)
AP – President Barack Obama fired a warning at the nation’s colleges and universities on Friday, threatening to strip their federal aid if they “jack up tuition” every year and to give the money instead to schools showing restraint and value.
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Obama ‘putting colleges on notice’ on high tuition
(AP)
President Barack Obama is, of course, smarter than an 8th grader. He went to Harvard. But maybe he doesn’t think the people who watched his State of the Union address are. His speech rated at an 8th grade reading comprehension level for the third year in a row. More from Politico : The University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics conducted an analysis on the last 70 State of the Union addresses and found that President Obama’s three addresses have the lowest grade average of any modern president. “Obama’s average grade-level score of 8.4 is more than two grades lower than the 10.7 grade average for the other 67 addresses written by his 12 predecessors,” they conclude.
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Are you smarter than an 8th grader?
