July 5, 2008
CNET visits the JSC
CNET's Road Trip 2008 blog visits the Johnson Space Center in the Clear Lake area of Houston (photos here). The article and accompanying photos are a good primer for the always interesting visit to the JSC.
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June 23, 2008
Clear thinking to begin the week
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May 31, 2008
I would have never guessed
That, according to this handy database, this person would have given the most commencement speeches during this current season of university graduation ceremonies.
Similarly, I would not have guessed the city in the world that is home to the most billionaires.
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May 28, 2008
Hope on the horizon
Following up on this post from awhile back, don't tell the folks at MIT that the prospects for mankind are gloomy. Check out this MIT News article that resulted from the institute's news office asking a collection of MIT faculty and researchers for their thoughts on the potentially life-altering technologies that are just around the corner.
Despite what the presidential candidates say, it's not all that bleak out there, folks!
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May 1, 2008
Neuroscience and the Law
I am always on the lookout for creative and interesting Continuing Legal Education seminars. This one clearly fits the bill:
Baylor College of Medicine’s Initiative on Neuroscience and Law is proud to announce its 2008 Conference. This conference showcases talks from experts in several aspects of neurolaw. Topics include responsibility, punishment, prediction, rehabilitation, brain death, genetics, competence, intention, and ethics – all with an eye toward understanding how cutting edge neuroscience will touch the current practice of law.
The conference, which is worth 3.5 hours of CLE credit, will take place on Friday, May 23, 2008, from 1-5 p.m. at Baylor College of Medicine (Room M321) in the Texas Medical Center. One of the speakers for the conference is Daniel Goldberg, a local attorney and former Texas Supreme Court clerk who is currently working on his PhD at the University of Texas Medical Branch while serving as a Research Professor at Baylor's Initiative on Neuroscience and Law and as a Health Policy Fellow at Baylor's Chronic Disease Prevention & Control Research Center (Daniel is also a frequent commenter on health care and health care finance issues on this blog). The preliminary agenda for the conference is here. Check it out.
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April 24, 2008
UH Law Center gets it right
Ray Nimmer is truly one of Houston's treasures. The Leonard Childs Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, Ray is one of the nation's leading authorities on business and bankruptcy law, computer information licensing, e-commerce, and related intellectual property issues, all of which he has addressed in the 20 or so books and numerous articles that he has written over his superlative 30+ year teaching career.
However, even more importantly, Ray is a gifted teacher who has taught a remarkably broad variety of courses at the UH Law Center over the past 30 years, including Contracts, Contract Drafting, Evidence, Bankruptcy, Corporate Reorganization Law, Internet Law, Electronic Commerce, Secured Financing Law, Negotiable Instruments, Copyright Law, Information Law, Sales, and Licensing Law. Somehow, Ray has even found the time to maintain a blog.
For the past couple of years, Ray has been serving as the Interim Dean at the law school, where he has done an excellent job of patching things up after the divisive resignation of the previous dean, Nancy Rapaport. As noted in this post from when Ray was appointed Interim Dean, I couldn't think of a better choice for the new permanent dean than Ray. Thus, I was happy to see this UH press release Wednesday confirming Ray's appointment to that position (Mary Flood's Chron article on the announcement is here). Ray released the following statement to friends, alumni and students:
As many of you know, in 2006 I agreed to serve as interim dean of the Law Center while a nationwide search for a permanent dean was conducted. That search has now been completed – and today I have accepted the position of Law Center Dean offered to me by Dr. Donald Foss, the provost of the University of Houston, subject to the approval of the UH Board of Regents.
In many ways, it remains business as usual at our school. Two years ago, this is what I told my team when I stepped in as interim dean:
Here’s what you can expect from me. I am pragmatic, oriented to understanding and explicating the role of law and lawyers in society, and I am committed to leading a team that will distinguish our Law Center as being among the best in academia and a major factor in the practical practice of law. I believe in action and achievement. I applaud people who target goals—and invest the necessary work to achieve them. And I am determined to give our highly skilled faculty, administrators and students the support they need to maneuver and achieve.
That’s been my approach over the past two years as we energized the Law Center and continued the “pursuit of excellence” in everything we do. Our momentum is reflected in our 15-point improvement in national rankings, two “Top 10” specialty programs, and record-high LSAT scores for our newest class.
I took the job of interim dean for a simple reason: because I believed the Law Center was on the cusp of great achievement, and I wanted to help my school reach that goal. Today, I am accepting the position of permanent dean for the same reason, and I am 100% committed to pushing us higher into the top echelon of Tier 1 law schools.
It is an honor following the seven men and women who previously served as permanent dean and contributed to the greatness of our school. With help from the entire Law Center community, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.
Congratulations to Ray for the much-deserved appointment and to the UH administration for making the right decision.
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February 28, 2008
I'm shocked, shocked! There is academic cheating in big-time college football!
The entertaining hypocrisy of big-time college athletics continues at Florida State University. (H/T Jay Christensen). Just like Rick's Cafe, everybody knows what's going on, too.
So, what level of embarrassment in regard to "academic integrity" is it going to take to prompt university presidents to reorganize big-time college football into the professional minor league business that is its true nature?
This imbroglio reminds me of an insight into academia that my late mentor, Ross Lence, passed along to me years ago. As regular readers of this blog know, A Man for All Seasons -- the story of Sir Thomas More's conflict with King Henry VIII -- is one of my favorite movies and it was one of Ross' favorites, too. Ross particularly enjoyed the scene early in the movie when Sir Thomas attempts unsuccessfully to persuade his student, Richard Rich, to eschew a political appointment for a teaching career. After rejecting Sir Thomas' advice, Rich takes a political appointment from Henry's henchman, Thomas Cromwell, in return for agreeing to betray Sir Thomas.
"Sir Thomas knew that Rich had a corrupt heart and would never be able to resist the corrupt temptations of politics," Ross observed to me once with a chuckle. "So he recommended that Rich become a teacher." Then, with a twinkle in his eye, Ross posited the question for discussion:
"But was Sir Thomas suggesting that a corrupt heart is not a problem for an academic?"
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February 25, 2008
Re-defining TSU
Leave it to new Texas Southern University President, John Rudley. He's not wasting any time before trying to shake things up at the chronically-troubled public university (previous posts here):
Texas Southern University's new president wants to end the school's long-standing practice of accepting all applicants, no matter their academic background, saying the policy contributes to its alarmingly low graduation rate.
President John Rudley said the change is necessary to remake the state's largest historically black university, which has been on the ropes recently because of management missteps, sliding enrollment and bad press.
As noted in this recent post, Rudley has his worked cut out for him in re-defining TSU's mission. The University of Houston-Downtown Campus has far surpassed TSU as the favored open-enrollment institution in the Houston area. Consequently, TSU must redefine itself or face becoming irrelevant. It's not clear to me Rudley's plan is the best one for TSU, but I admire him for his vision. It's badly needed at TSU.
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February 22, 2008
Compensation through resort privileges
Check out the renovated digs for the University of Texas baseball team at UFCU Disch-Falk Field in Austin.
Even the most defensible big-time intercollegiate sport is now funneling compensation to its players through "resort privileges." The renovated locker room at Disch-Falk looks better than most university faculty lounges that I've seen.
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February 6, 2008
The First and Last 100 Days?
Over at the University of Houston, the university is celebrating the arrival of its impressive new Chancellor and President, Renu Khator. As a part of that celebration, the university has posted this interesting website entitled Building Our Future: The First 100 Days that solicits ideas from the university and Houston communities on the direction of the city's primary public university. Check it out and participate in an exciting time for UH.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the optimism scale, the desperate state of Texas Southern University continues. Ubu Roi over at blogHouston.net provides this good overview of the daunting challenges facing new TSU President, John Rudley (previous posts on TSU are here). As Roi points out, one of TSU's better schools -- its law school -- is at risk of losing its accreditation, and that news comes on the heels of a regional accrediting body recently placing the entire university on probation. Meanwhile, President Rudley is wrestling with the legislative requirements for obtaining $40 million in emergency funding that the institution desperately needs just to keep the lights on.
As noted earlier here, here, and here, TSU is a once-essential institution that is at serious risk of becoming irrelevant. During the era of segregated education in Texas, TSU was arguably Texas' best university for minority students. The institution educated many of Texas' finest minority leaders, including Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland. However, over the past 20 years, TSU has been bypassed by both the University of Houston-Downtown Campus and Houston Community College as the preferred open admissions alternatives for the Houston area's college students.
At this point, a merger of TSU with one of the other university systems probably makes the most sense, but even that alternative is not easy. Merging UH-Downtown and TSU would serve the purpose of largely consolidating Houston's open admissions institutions, but the UH system does not have sufficient endowed capital to absorb TSU, a shameful legacy of Texas' underfunding of UH's endowment in comparison to the other two major public university systems in Texas, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems. Texas A&M already has an open admissions university in its system at Prairie View A&M and UT probably has little interest in increasing its investment in the Houston area given the UT Health Science Center's huge presence in the Texas Medical Center. So, TSU is not a particularly good fit for those far wealthier systems, either.
Thus, at least for the time being, TSU will continue to muddle along. But don't be fooled. TSU is on life support and the emergency measures for keeping it alive are are inadequate to provide the long-term vision that the university needs. It's well past time for state and community leaders to put their parochial interests aside and come up with a long-term plan for TSU that provides the institution with a specific purpose within the framework of college alternatives for Houston area residents. Sadly, dangling $40 million in front of TSU to keep the lights on is not going to accomplish much of anything in defining TSU's purpose.
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February 3, 2008
WinkingSkull.com
Check out WinkingSkull.com, a worthy counterpart to the Visual Medical Dictionary (noted earlier here) in better understanding anatomy and medical conditions.
Along those lines, did you know that "the bacteria count in the plaque on human teeth approaches the bacteria count in human feces?" (H/T Kevin, MD)
Still biting those fingernails? ;^)
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January 21, 2008
Visual Medical Dictionary
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January 8, 2008
YouTube for eggheads?
This looks as if it has great potential. The NY Times has the background story on the project.
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October 18, 2007
Kling on GMU Economics
Arnold Kling provides this interesting TCS Daily op-ed on the innovative George Mason University Economics Department, whose members have done a remarkable job over the past several years promoting the understanding of economics issues through the blogosphere. As Kling noted earlier here:
I like to put it his way: at [the University of] Chicago, they say "Markets work well. Let's use markets." At MIT, they say "Markets fail. Let's use government." At GMU, they say "Markets fail. Let's use markets."
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October 12, 2007
Thinking about think tanks
On the announcement of his retirement next year as president of the American Enterprise Institute, Chistopher DeMuth provides a large dose of common sense in this OpinionJournal op-ed:
Think tanks are identified in the public mind as agents of a particular political viewpoint. It is sometimes suggested that this compromises the integrity of their work. Yet their real secret is not that they take orders from, or give orders to, the Bush administration or anyone else. Rather, they have discovered new methods for organizing intellectual activity--superior in many respects (by no means all) to those of traditional research universities.To be sure, think tanks--at least those on the right--do not attempt to disguise their political affinities in the manner of the (invariably left-leaning) universities. We are "schools" in the old sense of the term: groups of scholars who share a set of philosophical premises and take them as far as we can in empirical research, persuasive writing, and arguments among ourselves and with those of other schools.
This has proven highly productive. It is a great advantage, when working on practical problems, not to be constantly doubling back to first principles. We know our foundations and concentrate on the specifics of the problem at hand. We like to work on hard problems, and there are many fertile disagreements in our halls over bioethics, school reform, the rise of China, constitutional interpretation and what to do about Korea and Iran.
Think tanks aim to produce good research not only for its own sake but to improve the world. We are organized in ways that depart sharply from university organization. Think-tank scholars do not have tenure, make faculty appointments, allocate budgets or offices or sit on administrative committees. These matters are consigned to management, leaving the scholars free to focus on what they do best. Management promotes the scholars' output with an alacrity that would make many university administrators uncomfortable.
And we pay careful attention to the craft of good speaking and writing. Many AEI scholars do technical research for academic journals, but all write for a wider audience as well. When new arrivals from academia ask me whom they should write for, I tell them: for your Mom. That is, for an interested, sympathetic reader who may not know beans about the technical aspects of your work but wants to know what you've discovered and why it makes a difference.
Read the entire piece.
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September 14, 2007
Not an advertisement for Vista
Don't look for Warren Meyer to be a spokesman for Microsoft Vista any time soon:
The laptop I bought my kids 6 months ago is rapidly becoming the worst purchase I have ever made. Not because the laptop is bad, but because of a momentary lack of diligence I bought one with Vista installed. It has been a never-ending disaster trying to get this computer to work. [. . .]Vista is rapidly becoming the New Coke of operating systems. I have had every version of windows on my computer at one time or another, including Windows 1.0 and the egregious Windows ME, and I can say with confidence Vista is the worst of them all by far.
Read Meyer's entire post, which he backs up quite well. Meanwhile, sales of Vista continue to lag badly behind those of XP.
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August 15, 2007
Criminalizing the Dean's Office
The seemingly insatiable desire of American prosecutors to criminalize as many ordinary and law-abiding citizens as possible has now reached the Dean's office:
A pair of schools officials, including the dean of students, and three students from Rider University have the campus community stunned after being charged with “aggravated hazing” in the death of a freshman student that died following a night of binge drinking at a fraternity house late last March, authorities said Friday. [. . .]"The ramifications of this for colleges and universities in New Jersey, and across the country, is that it will send some kind of message that the standards of college life, when it relates to alcohol, need to be policed carefully," Mercer County Prosecutor Joseph Bocchini Jr. told the Associated Press.
Bocchini didn't mention that he could have also obtained the indictment of a ham sandwich if he had asked the grand jury for one. I'm looking forward to hearing about the "evidence" that the Dean had anything to do whatsoever with the alleged hazing incident that led to this young man's unfortunate death. If, as I suspect, there isn't any, then what exactly is the message that Bocchini is sending?
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June 14, 2007
Probably not the best spokesman for home schooling
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Banning the live bloggers
The National Collegiate Athletic Association's dubious regulation of intercollegiate athletics has been a frequent topic on this blog, but I must admit that this absurd example of overwrought regulatory control from last weekend's NCAA Super-Regional baseball series surprised even me:
Everybody can watch a game on TV and put their musings online. But don't try blogging from a press box at an NCAA championship.After the NCAA tossed Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Brian Bennett for doing just that at an NCAA baseball tournament game Sunday — actually revoking his media credential during a Louisville-Oklahoma State super regional game — it said Monday that it was just protecting its rights.
Like rights to live game radio or TV coverage, suggests NCAA spokesman Erik Christianson, live coverage online is a longstanding "protected right" that is bought and sold. Blogging reporters can report about things such as game "atmosphere," he says in an e-mail, but "any reference to game action" could cost them their credentials.
Christianson says those online "rights" were packaged into media deals with CBS and ESPN — which aired the game. Monday, ESPN spokesman Dave Nagle said "our rights are the live TV rights. We didn't ask them (to take the reporter's credential.) And they didn't ask us."
A similar incident occurred at the Rice-Texas A&M Super-Regional in Houston.
Howard Wasserman analyzes the speech restriction issues, while Rich Karcher reviews it from an intellectual property standpoint. And the NY Times is reporting today that the Courier-Journal is weighing whether to mount a legal challenge to the NCAA's action on First Amendment grounds.
What on earth are these NCAA-types thinking?
By the way, not everyone is pleased with the way in which Rice won the Houston Super-Regional.
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June 1, 2007
Nothing changes at TSU
As bad as Texas Southern University's chronic problems are, they can be resolved through a combination of forceful leadership and common sense. However, intractable local and state political forces prevent TSU's problems from being addressed effectively. Consequently, it is somehow appropriate that the first act of the new board of trustees of TSU to address TSU's financial problems is taken against the folks least capable of resolving those problems -- i.e., the students:
Texas Southern University's regents approved a new round of tuition increases Wednesday, with students paying 8 percent more at the historically black institution this fall. [. . .]The tuition hike follows a 22 percent increase last year. The university had tried in previous years to hold off increases because of the potential hardship for students, many of whom are working adults or recent high school graduates from low-income families.
Regents said they voted reluctantly for the tuition increase, but the university's financial problems required the additional revenue.
TSU's tuition is now higher than Houston's other open-admissions university, the University of Houston Downtown Campus, which does a better job of educating its students than TSU.
I put the over/under for the next scandal at TSU at three years.
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May 24, 2007
Proof that Texas legislators don't have enough to do
The lead in to this Ft. Worth Star Telegram article is a dead giveaway that Texas legislators are in a "throw the money around" mood as they near the end of the legislative session:
Many Texas students are too fat, experts say, and face future health problems because of their poor fitness. This week, the Legislature may weigh whether a new annual fitness test can help whip them into better shape. Fitness guru Dr. Kenneth Cooper of Dallas teamed up with Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, to author legislation that would require schools to monitor students' health to prevent childhood obesity . . .According to the bill, students in kindergarten through fifth grade must have “moderate or vigorous" activity for 30 minutes each day. Students in grades six, seven and eight must have physical activity 30 minutes a day for four semesters. Additionally, schools must annually assess the physical fitness of students in grades three through eight. Under the legislation, the Texas Education Agency would be asked to adopt a testing tool that measures aerobic capacity, body composition, muscular strength, endurance and flexibility.
According to the bill, the TEA must also analyze the data for a correlation between physical fitness and academic achievement, attendance, disciplinary problems and obesity . . .
The wording in the bill that describes the required testing tool mirrors language on the Web site for Cooper's FitnessGram, developed in 1982 to measure health and fitness levels of children . . . The FitnessGram would cost about $230 for each child when purchased from its distributor, Human Kinetics. The nonprofit Cooper Institute receives $30 from each sale.
Sandy Szwarc nicely sums up the skimpy clinical evidence upon which the above-described legislation is based:
The bottom line was that [Harvard School of Public Health] researchers were not able to clearly establish a direction between fitness and overweight. Meaning, the slightly lower levels of athleticism among heavier children didn’t necessarily point to that as being the cause for their size, nor that trying to turn them into better athletes will make them slimmer.There is no credible evidence that the levels of physical activity and fitness among fat children are less than thinner kids to explain their diversity in sizes. There is no credible evidence that school or after-school physical activity programs reduce obesity among children. The medical evidence long ago demonstrated that heredity and genes account for aerobic capacity, upper body strength and athletic prowess. Researchers have also found that different children have different physical aptitudes, just like academic and artistic abilities. Research, for example, in the journal of the North Association for the Study of Obesity, Obesity Research, found that “obese” and nonobese school kids had similar levels of physical activity, while nonobese boys engaged in more sports. The fat children did poorer on propulsion tasks, but showed greater grip strength and similar scores with the other kids on overall fitness.
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May 21, 2007
"Superstar historian"?
Please excuse three straight posts bashing various Chronicle articles, but this Chronicle/Allan Turner reads like a press release from Rice University regarding the institution's hiring of former Tulane University history professor, Douglas Brinkley:
The man who once took a busload of college students on a madcap tour of the nation's historic and natural wonders, including the Grand Canyon and author Ken Kesey's farm, may be just what Rice University's austere public policy think tank needs to make itself a household name.That, at least, was the hope on Thursday as university officials explored the possible benefits of their latest faculty hire — New Orleans superstar historian Douglas Brinkley — might bring to Rice and its Baker Institute of Public Policy.
A protege of best-selling historian Stephen Ambrose and a regular commentator for CBS News, Brinkley is renowned for his ability to make complex ideas understandable. He is a prolific author, and his 700-plus page tome chronicling Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast will receive the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Book Award later this month.
Brinkley, said Baker founding director Edward Djerejian, could be "a bridge between the world of ideas and action," helping the institute spread its policy recommendations to the general public.
"He's going to bring us a huge amount of visibility," added Rice humanities dean Gary Wihl.
"Superstar historian"? That characterization of Brinkley is certainly not shared by all in the academic community, as noted in this earlier post regarding this William McCrary review of Brinkley's Hurricane Katrina book:
Let me confess that I haven't read all of the writings of Douglas Brinkley. I doubt that anyone -- perhaps not even Mr. Brinkley himself -- has ever done that. He is a veritable ... deluge of literary productivity, with books to his credit on a dizzying array of subjects, ranging from Beat poetry to Jimmy Carter, and from Henry Ford to, most recently, the failed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Indeed, the range of his literary productions is so wide as to seem indiscriminate. But his bestknown writings seem to have three things in common.First and foremost is their relentless mediocrity. I cannot think of a historian or public intellectual who has managed to make himself so prominent in American public life without having put forward a single memorable idea, a single original analysis, or a single lapidary phrase -- let alone without publishing a book that has had any discernable impact. Mr. Brinkley is, to use Daniel Boorstin's famous words, a historian famous for being well-known.
For what it's worth, I have read both Brinkley's book on Hurricane Katrina and Jed Horne's Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great Ameican City (Random House 2006). Horne's book is a good read and far superior to Brinkley's book, which is borderline unreadable.
Moreover, this skeptical view of Brinkley's academic talent is not new. Back in 1999, Slate's David Platz penned this well-know article about Brinkley taking advantage of his friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr. to publicize himself after Kennedy's death in a plane crash:
According to the Washington Post, Brinkley cut a $10,000 deal with NBC for a week of exclusive Kennedy commentary, but then agreed to provide it pro bono. Editors at George [Kennedy's magazine] are reportedly so annoyed about Brinkley's death punditry that they have dropped him from the masthead.Even amid this week's staggering hyperbole, Brinkley's emotional profligacy has distinguished him. He is, as he rarely fails to remind his audience, 38 years old like Kennedy, a vegetarian like Kennedy, and a Sagittarius like Kennedy. That identification with Kennedy accounts in part for Brinkley's tenuous proposition: that Kennedy's death is the signal event of his generation, the moment Gen X lost its innocence. In the opening paragraph of his New York Times op-ed, Brinkley opined: "It's as if suddenly, an entire generation's optimism is deflated, and all that is left is the limp reality of growing old." Kennedy's death may have affected his friend Brinkley this way. I am not sure anyone else outside Kennedy's circle was so moved.[ . . .]
Brinkley's sunniness and ardor are appealing, but his public history has its shortcomings. His idols, Ambrose and Schlesinger, have won the admiration of the academy and the public. Brinkley has won the public but has not wowed the academy. Some of his colleagues' dismay is simply jealousy of his entrepreneurship, but some is more substantive. His books read like good journalism--and that's no insult--but they are not great history. "He has made no analytical contribution at all," says one Ivy League historian who professes to like Brinkley.
I am glad that the Chronicle considers Rice's hiring of a history professor is newsworthy. However, for the Chron article not even to mention the well-known doubts about the academic merit of Brinkley's work is the type of cheerleading usually reserved for the Chronicle sportspage.
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March 9, 2007
Levinson and Balkin on the Dred Scott case
Longtime University of Texas Law Professor Sandy Levinson has teamed up with Jack Balkin of Balkinization fame to author a new SSRN paper, 13 Ways of Looking at Dred Scott. For a provocative abstract, check the following out:
Dred Scott v. Sanford is a classic case that is relevant to almost every important question of contemporary constitutional theory.Dred Scott connected race to social status, to citizenship, and to being a part of the American people. One hundred fifty years later these connections still haunt us; and the twin questions of who is truly American and who American belongs to still roil our national debates.
Dred Scott is a case about threats to national security and whether the Constitution is a suicide pact. It concerns whether the Constitution follows the flag and whether constitutional rights obtain in federally held lands overseas. And it asks whether, as Chief Justice Taney famously said of blacks, there are indeed some people who have no rights we Americans are bound to respect.
Dred Scott remains the most salient example in debates over the legitimacy of substantive due process. It subverts our intuitions about the relative merits of originalism and living constitutionalism. It symbolizes the problem of constitutional evil and the question whether responsibility for great injustices lies in the Constitution itself or in the judges who apply it.
Finally, Dred Scott encapsulates the central problems of judicial review in a constitutional democracy. On the one hand, Dred Scott raises perennial questions about the judicial role in cases of profound moral and political disagreement, and about judicial responsibility for the backlash and political upheaval that may result from judicial review. On the other hand, the political context of the Dred Scott decision suggests that the Supreme Court rarely strays far from the wishes of the dominant national political coalition. It raises the unsettling possibility that, given larger social and political forces, what courts do in highly contested cases is far less important than we imagine.
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February 25, 2007
Larry Ribstein's big day
Great teachers are a popular topic on this blog (see here and here), so I would be remiss if I didn't note that the University of Illinois College of Law conducted the investiture ceremony earlier this week honoring Clear Thinkers favorite Larry Ribstein as the holder of the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair at the school.
The blawgosphere has undergone such explosive growth over the past several years that we are still too close to it to realize the full extent of the seismic shift that it has caused in the area of legal research and analysis. But make no mistake about it, Professor Ribstein has been at the forefront of this sea change, literally pushing legal scholarship from what had been mostly closed conversations between fellow academics into a hugely valuable resource that is now readily available to millions over the Web. Already the leading expert in the U.S. in the area of unincorporated business associations, Professor Ribstein has become one of the blawgosphere's most insightful thinkers on corporate governance issues and the effects of regulation on markets and business. His Ideoblog blog has contributed at least as much to the understanding and appreciation of business law issues over the past three years as any Web resource of which I am aware.
The video of Larry's investiture ceremony is here. Larry's acceptance speech begins at about the 14 and a half minute mark of the program and is essentially a review of the impact that the study of markets has had on his marvelous career. Having the opportunity to watch a top notch academic at the top of his game is always an enjoyable experience, so pull up a chair and watch Larry's speech. Besides, unless you watch the video, how else are you going to learn the story of how Larry's blog is really the result of failed entrepreneurial ventures involving hamsters and an animal cemetery?
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February 22, 2007
Off to the Advanced Business Bankruptcy Conference
I'm buzzing up to downtown Dallas for the day to participate in the State Bar of Texas CLE's 25th Annual Advanced Business Bankruptcy Conference at the Adolphus Hotel. If you happen to be in downtown Dallas today and have some free time, then come on by and say hello and perhaps even take in a part of the conference. This is consistently one of the State Bar's best prepared and most informative continuing legal education programs.
The conference brochure is here, and the updated outline for my talk -- Business Bankruptcy Blogs -- is here.
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February 7, 2007
Institutionalized fanaticism
If your friends or co-workers who follow college football closely are acting a bit stressed out today, then it's quite likely that the source of their anxiety is a 17 or 18 year old who they have never met.
Yes, today is that day of the absurd dubbed "National Signing Day" when we are deluged with the rather odd spectacle of grown men fawning over high school football players to induce them to come take advantage of their university's resort facilities rather than their competition's resort facilities. And, oh yeah, if they can earn a few "tips" from well-heeled alums while enjoying those resort facilities, then that's alright, too.
Indeed, this NY Times article already suggests that the University of Illinois' inexplicably strong recruiting class this year may be the result of cheating. With the proliferation of the blogosphere over the past couple of years, a host of blogs follow the recruiting wars closely and often with keen wit. The following are a few of the interesting posts on this year's recruiting season that I've stumbled across:
The Wizard of Odds explains why all of this competition over the quality of recruiting classes is largely meaningless;The Sunday Morning QB examines the strange system in which all of this has evolved;
The House that Rock Built explores the ripple effect of recruiting decisions;
Every Day Should Be a Saturday reveals how recruiting foretold Rex Grossman's mediocre Super Bowl performance (just kidding);
A widget that displays a map reflecting where a school's recruits are coming from; and
The College Football Resource page has more information than you should ever want to know about this year's top recruits and where they are going.
Meanwhile, as university presidents continue to dither over this fundamentally flawed system of regulating rents, this post from a couple of years ago suggests that a better system is readily available so long as the colleges forsake being the NFL's free minor league system, a position with which Malcolm Gladwell agrees. As noted earlier here, big-time college football as presently structured is hopelessly corrupt, but it's a pretty darn entertaining form of corruption. Adopting a structure much closer to college baseball would likely minimize the corruptive elements of college football while not affecting the entertainment value of the sport much. But it's going to take leadership and courage from the top of the universities to promote and implement such a reform.
What are the chances of such leadership emerging? Probably about the same as Rice knocking off Texas next season in Austin.
Posted by Tom at 4:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 2, 2007
Make sure they serve coffee
Norm Pattis over at Crime & Federalism isn't impressed with the following offering by the University of Connecticut School of Law this semester:
Seminar: Therapeutic Jurisprudence 692Professor: Robert G. Madden, LCSW, JD
Course Description: Therapeutic Jurisprudence is an interdisciplinary approach to law that focuses on the impact of legal rules, processes and institutions on people's emotional lives and psychological well-being. Using this perspective, the course examines recent developments in several areas, including collaborative divorce law; creative problem solving; the establishment of drug treatment, domestic violence, mental health and other specialized courts; preventive law; procedural and restorative justice; and alternative dispute resolution. Readings include materials from psychology, criminology, social work, and other disciplines. The course is designed to emphasize how therapeutic jurisprudence may enrich the practice of law through the integration of interdisciplinary, non-adversarial, nontraditional, creative, collaborative, and psychologically-beneficial legal experiences.
Imagine the implications for courtroom exchanges during courtroom testimony:
"Objection, your honor.""What's your objection?"
"Contrary to sound social policy."
Posted by Tom at 5:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
January 27, 2007
Update on university endowments
The financing of public universities (see here and here) and college education generally (see here) have been frequent topics recently, so this National Association of College and University Business Officers publication ranking the 765 top endowments of U.S. universities is timely (last year's ranking is here). Here are the rankings of some universities that will be of interest to most Texans:
1 Harvard University $28.9 billion
2 Yale University $18.0 billion
3 Stanford University $14.0 billion
4 University of Texas System $13.2 billion
10 Texas A&M University System $5.64 billion
19 Rice University $3.98 billion
55 Southern Methodist University $1.22 billion
57 Baylor College of Medicine $1.0 billion
62 Texas Christian University $1.0 billion
65 University of Oklahoma $960 million
73 Baylor University $870 million
80 Trinity University (San Antonio) $815 million
100 Louisiana State University System $593 million
116 Texas Tech University $540 million
135 University of Houston System $454 million
190 Southwestern University (Georgetown) $280 million
217 Abilene Christian University $228 million
297 St. Mary's University (San Antonio) TX $135 million
315 Austin College (Sherman) $120 million
325 Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Austin) $110 million
362 Hardin-Simmons University (Abilene) $88 million
375 Houston Baptist University $82 million
389 Angelo State University $77 million
419 University of North Texas $66 million
437 Texas State University-San Marcos $61,596
449 Texas Lutheran University (Seguin) $58,524
466 St. Edward's University (Austin) $54 million
472 McMurry University (Abilene) $53 million
494 University of St. Thomas (Houston) $48
497 East Texas Baptist University (Marshall) $47 million
510 University of Dallas $45 million
515 Howard Payne University $44 million
523 University of the Incarnate Word (San Antonio) $42 million
524 Schreiner University (Kerrville) $42 million
580 Texas Wesleyan University (Ft. Worth) $32 million
763 Laredo Community College $1.9 million
Houston's problem-laden university -- Texas Southern University -- does not even make the list. Meanwhile, the University of Texas, Texas A&M University and Rice University continue to maintain top 20 endowments, but the University of Houston continues to provide the most bang for the educational buck of any university system in Texas. Which is all the more reason why the state and the Houston area should be exploring ways to supplement UH's endowed capital in connection with elevation of the UH-Central Campus to tier I research university status.
Posted by Tom at 6:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 26, 2007
What to do about TSU?
Earlier this week, the discussion in Texas education circles was the University of Houston's proposal to establish a third medical school in the Texas Medical School in conjunction with The Methodist Hospital and Cornell University. Today, the discussion turns toward one of chronic problems of the Texas system of public universities -- what to do about Texas Southern University?
Turns out that former TSU president Priscilla Slade's spending habits are the least of TSU's problems. TSU cannot come close to paying its current and projected liabilities, which include the following:
Deferred maintenance on buildings -- including daily pumping of water out of the school's administration building -- totaling $54 million over the next 10 years;Missing purchase orders and outstanding payables from past years to vendors of $1.7 million owed without purchase orders and another $900,000 owed with purchase orders that were not budgeted;
Shuttle service and parking garages do not collect enough fees to support debt service on $34 million in construction projects. Who thought that they would?;
The athletics department has a $2 million operating deficit even though it is subsidized primarily with student fees;
The institution's computer and information technology is obsolescent and needs to be overhauled at a short term cost of more than $500,000, which is also not budgeted; and
There is a $1.2 million debt service shortfall on two new dorms that are not even fully occupied.
Governor Perry's office issued the usual strong words about TSU needing to fix its problems immediately. But, really. What the heck is the TSU board of regents to do in the short term? Hold bake sales to raise money?
Texas Southern's financial problems are chronic and are not going away absent a re-evaluation of its place among Texas public universities in general and the Houston area's need for multiple open admission institutions, in particular. Although it provided an important service to Texas in the days of segregation, TSU has been largely overtaken in providing the open admissions service to the Houston area by the University of Houston-Downtown, which does a better job of educating its students and, over the past decade or so, has grown into a larger institution than TSU. Of course, it helps that UH-D has access to the University of Houston system's relatively modest endowment, a distinct advantage that TSU has never enjoyed.
So, what to do with TSU? Well, it's clear that providing minimal emergency funding for its short-term financial problems -- the usual response -- is akin to throwing money on a dormant campfire. TSU needs to be merged into one of the major university systems -- the UH system probably makes the most sense at this point -- and then the legislature needs to provide realistic short-term and long-term funding while UH absorbs TSU, probably into a second UH-D campus. But however TSU is reorganized, one thing is clear -- providing funding for its current financial problems without a long-term plan for reorganizing the institution and redefining its purpose would be a failure of leadership, something that Texans have endured for far too long in the funding and administration of their public universities.
Posted by Tom at 4:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 25, 2007
Thinking beyond the UH Medical School
BlogHouston.net's Kevin Whited notes this Chronicle/Todd Ackerman article about the University of Houston floating a proposed new Texas Medical Center-based medical school in a collaborative project with The Methodist Hospital and Cornell University's Weill Medical School.
Unfortunately for UH, the proposal has zilch chance of floating for much more than a few minutes amidst the shark-infested waters of Texas educational politics. Heck, the political forces in Texas cannot even agree to provide adequate funding of UH's uncriticizable goal of becoming the state's third tier I research university. The University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and Baylor College of Medicine -- Methodist's former longtime partner -- are just a few of the powerful political forces that would almost certainly line up against the UH-Methodist proposal.
Yet, the UH-Methodist proposal has merit, so here's a proposed modification. Rather than start another medical school from scratch, let's merge the University of Houston system with the Texas A&M system and have A&M expand its fledgling medical school into the Texas Medical Center from its current central Texas outpost. From a broader standpoint, the merger makes sense because it gives the A&M system something that it desperately needs -- a major urban presence -- while also giving UH something that it has always lacked -- that is, access to adequate endowed capital. Such a merger would also provide A&M with the law school that it has always coveted and would greatly facilitate UH's elevation into a tier I research institution, which is something that would substantially benefit the Houston area.
While the University of Texas would almost certainly oppose such a merger, perhaps a deal could be struck at the same time to merge the Texas Tech University system into the UT system while organizing the remainder of Texas' non-affiliated public universities into a third university system for funding and administrative purposes. Such a structure would give Texas a similar structure to that of the reasonably successful California model, which has generated far more first rate, tier I research universities (10) than the current dysfunctional Texas system (2). Indeed, almost anything would be a huge improvement over the current Texas system, which allocates a disproportionate amount of endowed capital to the UT and A&M systems while starving the remainder of Texas' public universities.
Make sense? You bet. Chances of happening? Probably not much. But just as UCLA and Cal-Berkeley co-exist productively in the same university system in California, UH and A&M could do the same in Texas. And just as two major university systems work side-by-side together to educate Californians, a similar structure would be a substantial improvement in the educational system of Texas.
Posted by Tom at 4:54 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
January 24, 2007
The sad story of Denice Denton
Denice Denton grew up in the Houston area, went to MIT to study engineering, won a number of research awards and eventually signed on in 1987 as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, where she was the only female faculty member in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the time. She continued to excel at Wisconsin and by 1996, Denton was hired at the age of 37 as the first female engineering dean at a major US research university in the U.S. (the University of Washington's College of Engineering).
Thus, it was not particularly surprising that Denton was named as chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2004, the youngest chancellor in the UC system. Less than two years later, an embattled Denton went on medical leave and checked herself into the Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital at the University of California at San Francisco. On June 24, 2006, after checking out of the hospital, Denton committed suicide by leaping from a high-rise apartment building in San Francisco.
This Paul Fain/Arts & Letters Daily article covers the final few weeks of Denton's life, and it's fascinating look into the intersection of depression, political correctness, anti-political correctness, and the byzantine world of academic politics. Definitely not a life for the faint-hearted.
Posted by Tom at 5:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 18, 2007
The Murray education series
The American Enterprise Institute's W. H. Brady Scholar, Charles Murray, completes today a provocative three-part series in the WSJ's OpinionJournal on education in America (earlier installments are here and here.
As with Murray's many books and this earlier piece on reforming welfare, Murray presents his thoughts on education in a compelling and provocative manner, urging us to modify our thoughts and societal prejudices regarding education and intelligence. Murray's emphasis on IQ as a standard for tailoring education puts some people off, which is unfortunate. As he concludes below, Murray's purpose is to provoke discussion on changing attitudes and prejudices that undermine productive and sensitive reforms in our educational system:
The aim here is not to complete an argument but to begin a discussion; not to present policy prescriptions, but to plead for greater realism in our outlook on education. Accept that some children will be left behind other children because of intellectual limitations, and think about what kind of education will give them the greatest chance for a fulfilling life nonetheless. Stop telling children that they need to go to college to be successful, and take advantage of the other, often better ways in which people can develop their talents. Acknowledge the existence and importance of high intellectual ability, and think about how best to nurture the children who possess it.
Don't miss this series. The three installments are as follows:
Intelligence in the Classroom: Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them.What's Wrong With Vocational School? Too many Americans are going to college.
Aztecs vs. Greeks: Those with superior intelligence need to learn to be wise.
Posted by Tom at 4:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
January 16, 2007
The Admiral of San Antonio
One of my sisters, Mary, is a pediatrician who lives in Boerne and works in San Antonio.
Although sister Mary couldn't care less about professional sports in general and professional basketball in particular, she knows who former San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson is and admires him a great deal. This NY Times article explains why.
Robinson made a lot of money in San Antone while playing for the Spurs, embraced the community during his playing days and decided to stick around and give back to the community after his playing career was over. Bully for him.
Posted by Tom at 4:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 10, 2007
Those pesky dealbreakers
In this TCS Daily op-ed, Professor Bainbridge weighs in on a problem that businesspeople invariably complain about in connection with the handling of contractual matters relating to their business -- those damn dealbreakin' transactional lawyers:
In his book, The Terrible Truth About Lawyers, Mark H. McCormack, founder of the International Management Group, a major sports and entertainment agency, wrote that "it's the lawyers who: (1) gum up the works; (2) get people mad at each other; (3) make business procedures more expensive than they need to be; and now and then deep-six what had seemed like a perfectly workable arrangement. Accordingly, I would say that the best way to deal with lawyers is not to deal with them at all."Pretty depressing stuff, especially if you hope to make a living as a transactional lawyer.
Bainbridge sums up by providing wise advice not only to transactional lawyers, but to any lawyer attempting to make a living resolving business issues:
All of which is why both legal education and the apprenticeship served by young associates must emphasize not only legal doctrine but also economics and business. It may still be possible for someone lacking any knowledge of finance and economics to be a successful mergers and acquisitions lawyer, but I doubt it. As Mark McCormack observed, "when lawyers try to horn in on the business aspects of a deal, the practical result is usually confusion and wasted time." Transactional lawyers therefore must understand the business, financial, and economic aspects of deals so as to draft workable contracts and disclosure documents, conduct due diligence, or counsel clients on issues that require business savvy as well as knowing the law.
Posted by Tom at 4:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
January 4, 2007
The most valuable college football programs
This post from awhile back addressed the widespread insolvency in big-time college football. However, as this Forbes article on the 15 most valuable college football programs points out, a few big-time programs do quite well, thank you. Notre Dame's program tops the list at a value of $97 million, while the University of Texas' program slides in at second at $88 million and Texas A&M's program checks in at no. 15 with a value of $53 million. By the way, Notre Dame remains the most valuable program despite being consistently the most overrated program on the big-time college scene these days. With last night's loss to LSU in the Sugar Bowl, the Irish have now lost nine straight bowl games since beating Texas A&M 24-21 in the 1994 Cotton Bowl.
A couple of surprises: Ohio State is only sixth on the list at $71 million, while the USC on the list is not the University of Southern California. Rather, it's the University of South Carolina at no. 14 with a value of $57 million. As you might expect, only teams from the Southeastern Conference, Big Ten Conference and Big 12 Conference made the Forbes list because those conferences have the most lucrative television deals with CBS, ESPN and ABC.
Finally, despite the value of these big-time programs, it is still decidedly minor league -- most NFL franchises are worth at least 10 times more than the most valuable college program.
Posted by Tom at 4:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
December 22, 2006
A remarkable Aggie resource
Despite Desmond Howard's gaffe earlier this week, Texas A&M University is a fascinating and indelible part of Texas culture. Recognizing that stature, Texas A&M's Cushing Library has undertaken a remarkable project entitled "The Historic Images Collection--Historic Images and Photographs of the Texas A&M Community."
The collection is a treasure trove of interesting photographs, such as this one of a pre-1900s baseball squad. Another early baseball team is here, while this 1923 picture includes in the back row, second from left, King Gill, the original A&M “12th Man,” and in the middle of the back row, Pat Olsen (the tallest one), a former major leaguer for whom the A&M baseball stadium is named. Finally, this picture of Aggie great Jacob Green from the 1970's shows the Emory Bellard-era striped shoulder football uniforms.
This is only a fraction of the photos in this remarkable collection, so take a few minutes to peruse the archive. Aggies take quite a bit of ribbing in Texas for their dogged adherence to tradition, but that respect for tradition is a big part of what produced this wonderful collection