Category:
Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

To Gleep, Or Not To Gleep

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Many times, outsiders seeking to chronicle the language of a tribe are lied to. I suspect this was the case with this 1963 article on campus slang. While many of the terms are well-documented, I can find no online references to the act of "gleeping" and suspect some researcher was getting his leg pulled.

Or maybe the reporter felt it would be a prank to make something up and insert it and see if anyone noticed.

Posted By: Paul - Sun May 29, 2016 - Comments (9)
Category: 1960s, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia, Slang

Dormitory Escape Plan

April 1967: Unable to stand living in an all-female University of Pennsylvania dorm with "150 screaming girls," but prevented from moving out by campus regulations, Elizabeth Freedman, 19, hatched a plan for escape.

Because married students could live off-campus with their spouse, she took out an ad in the school paper seeking a husband willing to have a 1-year "platonic" marriage. She received over 300 1000 responses, but eventually abandoned her plan when the University agreed to move her to a smaller, 18-student dorm.

Cincinnati Enquirer - Apr 15, 1967



Update: Here's the actual ad she ran, in The Daily Pennsylvanian - Apr 13, 1967. Also, she was eventually interviewed on Johnny Carson. However, she refused to ever pose for a photograph, saying, "I hate publicity."

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 19, 2016 - Comments (5)
Category: 1960s, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

Leather For The Discerning Vegan

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Students from Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam Netherlands collaborated on a project that would almost certainly have PETA's approval. They used the food waste from a large local market to make fruitleather. The product was used to make purses as well as swatches to show the different colors available depending on the fruits used. Leather you don't have to hide.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 13, 2015 - Comments (9)
Category: Crafts, Fashion, Food, Vegetarians and Vegans, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

Seeing The Light

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For those who wish to recover their sight promising research is being done by the Universities of Bern, Switzerland and Gottingen, Germany. The process is called Optogenetic therapy and is expected to help those who have lost their sight due to some degenerative diseases of the eyes. Certain proteins are inserted into cells in the retina causing those cells to sense light. The effected cells then act in place of the light sensing cell that were destroyed by the disease process. This treatment has already been successful in returning sight to mice. It is not a cure for all blindness but it is certainly a great step forward in treating blindness due to degenerative diseases. There seems to be a long way to go before it will be ready for human use but the journey has at least begun.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 02, 2015 - Comments (2)
Category: Science, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia, Eyes and Vision

Gender Neutral Pronouns

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The use of gender neutral pronouns such as ze and xem, amongst others is being encouraged on the campus of the University of Tennessee. Administration wants to be welcoming and all inclusive to new students and I quote, “We should not assume someone’s gender by their appearance, nor by what is listed on a roster or in student information systems,” #down the rabbit hole.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 29, 2015 - Comments (12)
Category: Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Deliberate Obscurity, Bombast, Bloviation and Pretentiousness, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

The Hamburger Rebellion of 1964

College protests during the 1960s weren't all about war and civil rights. In 1964, students at California's Long Beach State started marching in protest after the school cafeteria raised the price of hamburgers five cents. It immediately became known in the press as the "Hamburger Rebellion." The students won a small victory, in that they managed to get the cafeteria to drop a two-cents charge for extra ketchup, but the price hike for the hamburgers remained.



Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 09, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: 1960s, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

Teaching history and science by dance

Marian Morgan believed that dance could be used to enhance the instruction of just about any subject. And back in 1916, she toured the country with her six dancers, demonstrating how dance-enhanced education would work.

The basic theory was that students would pay more attention if young female dancers performed at the front of the classroom as the lecturer talked. For example, as explained by the Washington Post (Aug 20, 1916):

Picture a fat freshman dosing in the chemistry class. The day before he had said boldly, and unashamed, 'I think I'll cut that beastly class in chemistry. I don't care what those darned atoms do to each other.' The fat freshman enters the class, bored and rebellious. He remains in it sleepy and indifferent. Suddenly he starts, suppressed a yawn, stealthily arranges his tie sheepishly, combs the hair with hurried fingers.

What happened? Has Old Bones (his disrespectful nickname for the professor of chemistry) been rooting around some second-hand store and found Aladdin's lamp?

The freshman's perception, newly acute, pierces his usual mental haze. The scene is a real one and delightful. True, 'Old Bones' is continuing his discourse. He is describing the chemistry of the blood. 'But this war of atoms may be a beneficent one,' he drones. 'The presence of disease-breeding bacilli in the blood is not necessarily destructive. For there are vigilant baccilli who lay hold upon the destroyers and slay them, as you see illustrated by this dance.'

The eyes of the freshmen beam. Never have 'Old Bones'' lectures been rewarded by such rapt and flattering attention. On the platform one lithe young Amazon in short Roman tunic is struggling with another.

Too bad this never caught on. Certainly would have improved a lot of lectures I had to sit through back in my college days.




Morgan's dancers



More in extended >>

Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 22, 2014 - Comments (9)
Category: Education, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia, 1910s, Dance

Crusader for corporal punishment caned

Eric Wildman was a crusader for corporal punishment. He believed strongly that if you spare the rod, you'll spoil the child. He was the president (and perhaps only member?) of the National Society for the Retention of Corporal Punishment in Schools. To support himself, he sold canes and whipping paraphenalia to schools and caning enthusiasts.

In 1948, he was invited to speak at Horsley Hall, a British school for boys. But the talk didn't turn out as he expected. As he was talking, a group of the boys crept up behind him, grabbed him, pinned him down, and then began beating him with his own canes.

Strangely enough, the assault turned out to have been planned by the school's headmaster, who was strongly anti-caning. He had decided to give Wildman a taste of his own medicine. Wildman threatened to sue the school, but never did.

You can read more about Wildman and the Horsley Hall incident at corpun.com, which also has lots of info about the strange history of corporal punishment.


Wildman and his canes


The Horsley Hall Incident


The Modesto Bee - Nov 26, 1948

Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 21, 2014 - Comments (2)
Category: 1940s, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia, Pain, Self-inflicted and Otherwise

Streakers Unmasked

A rare case of an exciting, full-contact economics class. Rita Balaban, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, knew there was a school tradition of classes being disrupted by masked streakers. So when it happened to her — three masked streakers rushing into her classroom — she was "mentally prepared." She said, "To me, it was a no-brainer. It was like, you're coming right at me. This is too easy. I grab the one guy's mask and just -- pfsh! -- pulled it right off, no problem! The other guy wasn't so easy. He dragged me out into the hall." [inside higher ed]

Posted By: Alex - Wed Nov 05, 2014 - Comments (9)
Category: Education, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

Business School for Bacteria

Artist Jonathon Keats is back with a new project. He's opening a business school for bacteria. More details at modernisminc.com.




NEW SAN FRANCISCO CONSULTANCY ROUTS SILICON VALLEY MONOCULTURE WITH BIODIVERSITY
Microbial Associates Announces Complete Executive Training For Bacteria -- Microbes Available For Employment At October Launch Event

September 25, 2014 -- Creatively stifled by insular hiring practices, and struggling to distinguish themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace, Silicon Valley technology companies are bracing for the first opportunity to radically diversify their executive workforce next month. On Tuesday, October 21st, approximately 100 billion bacteria will be certified in fields ranging from management to finance to product development by Microbial Associates, the only corporate consultancy in the world fostering successful business relationships between humans and prokaryotes.

"Bacteria are the most industrious organisms on the planet, and also the most creative," says experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, founder and managing director of Microbial Associates. "Forming mountains and oxygenating the atmosphere, they literally made the world in which we live. Just imagine if Google or Facebook were to leverage that world-changing talent."

Mr. Keats is not surprised that bacteria have been overlooked by human resources departments. "Microbes are microscopic," he observes. Moreover they've never been educated for business, credentialed for employment, or prepared for recruitment. Microbial Associates will provide all three services in their offices at San Francisco's Modernism Gallery, where bacteria can be hired for as little as one billionth of a cent per hour.

Business lessons will be provided to bacterial populations in state-of-the-art Pyrex classrooms using chemotactic and galvanotactic techniques developed by Mr. Keats and piloted at Amherst College. "Chemotaxis and galvanotaxis are some of the primary ways bacteria sense their environment," Mr. Keats explains. "By modulating the flow of chemicals and electricity in vitro, we can demonstrate essential principles such as supply-and-demand and strategic planning." For instance, bacteria learn about supply curves by being pumped in and out of equilibrium, giving them the direct experience of a concept most CFOs grasp only in the abstract.

"The bacteria end up knowing more than many executives I've met," says Stanley Bing, Fortune Magazine columnist and author of The Curriculum, who serves as a Microbial Associates advisor. No special background is needed. "We can work with almost any species of bacteria," claims Mr. Keats, "even those in corporate lunchrooms."

Nor is enrollment limited. Because each bacterial cell is less than ten microns long, classroom throughput is more than a billion bacteria at a time, far surpassing the technological capacity of any MOOC. This small scale is also beneficial for employers in a highly competitive real estate market. Trillions of bacteria can fit inside a single cubicle.

Mr. Keats stresses that his biochemical curriculum -- which culminates in official certification and job placement for graduating bacteria -- is intended only to help microbes adjust to the human workplace. "They need to be familiar with how we think in order to gain acceptance as colleagues," he says. "But their real benefit to companies will derive from their innate skill set. Diversity breeds innovation, disrupting the creative monotony of the corporate monoculture. Systems evolved by bacteria can vastly enhance any startup or megacorporation."

Key examples of bacterial business savvy include quorum sensing and horizontal gene transfer. The former allows bacteria to respond dynamically to new opportunities regardless of population size, a crucial skill that most companies lose as they grow. The latter lets bacteria creatively recombine innovations in a changing environment, avoiding the gridlock of corporate patent disputes. Microbial Associates' strategic consultants can deliver these business principles to any boardroom -- from Silicon Valley to New York City --with or without a team of bacterial employees.

"We've learned from bacteria to be highly adaptive," says Mr. Keats. "Microbial Associates can accommodate the needs of any company and we're confident that all can gain from it. Bacteria are eons ahead of us in real-world experience. Perhaps they can even train us how to live and work sustainably in the world they invented."

Posted By: Alex - Sat Oct 04, 2014 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Business, Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia

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Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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