From Penn State to State Pen?

Today being Saturday, the day semi-traditionally reserved for sport commentary, I feel obligated to discuss the downfall of Joe Paterno, the longtime football coach at Penn State.

Unless you've been living under a rock--and no judgment here: Some of my most faithful followers are morlocks--you know Paterno was fired this week, a result of his actions--or inaction--in an unfolding sexual abuse scandal involving his former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky.  Several years ago, a graduate assistant informed Paterno that he (the assistant) had witnessed Sandusky molesting a young boy.  Paterno apparently reported the incident to his superiors and then took no further action.  Whether Paterno is criminally liable in the case will presumably be determined in the coming weeks.and months.  At any rate, he seems morally culpable for not reporting the incident to the police or otherwise following up on his report to the school administration.

What's disheartening in this whole affair--aside from Sandusky's obviously repugnant actions--has been the reaction of the Penn State student body to Paterno's dismissal.  A large contingent went to the coach's home on the night of his dismissal to offer the coach their support in his time of need--which might be OK--and to protest the university's action--which is not.

Let me amend that: Protesting is OK.  People can protest anything they want.  But protesting Paterno's dismissal seems pointless at best and offensive at worst.  What are these people protesting?  The firing of a man who preaches discipline and education and moral standards but who saw fit not to report a credible case of child molestation--rape, in fact--to the police.  Do these people feel Paterno was unjustly fired?  Would they have the courage to say this to the parents of the children raped by Sandusky?  To the children themselves?

Paterno's unique standing in both the local Pennsylvania community and the wider world of college football further condemn him.  Many players in this drama may have feared for their careers or reputations if they had made accusations against Sandusky, a respected member of the Penn State "family"; Paterno can claim no such fears.  The man is a legend.  He would have faced no personal consequences for making his concerns known and for following up on the investigation.  So why didn't he?  Could he just not be bothered?

Given the information that has come out so far, I suspect that Paterno will not face criminal charges.  He probably fulfilled his legal obligations by reporting the matter.  But he has lost whatever moral standing he may have held.  More importantly, though, the students at Penn State and around the world who lament the "injustice" done to JoePa should save their sympathy for the victims of these crimes and accept--if not applaud--the action that the university took.

The New Season?

Saw a commercial this afternoon for the upcoming second season of "The Next Great Baker" on TLC.  This came as quite a shock, as I didn't know there had been a first season of "The Next Great Baker."  Then again, the show might just have gotten buried in the veritable avalanche of TLC's other baking-themed shows, "Cake Boss," "Fabulous Cakes," and "DC Cupcakes."

(DIGRESSION: Suggested tagline for TLC's "Extreme Couponing": "TLC: We're not just baking and midgets anymore!"

WOS: They need a show about midgets who bake!  "The Littlest Baker"?  Copyright!

SOL: How about "Jon and Kate Plus Cake"? Copyright! EOD)

Seriously, though, between "The Next Great Baker" and Bravo's "Top Chef: Just Desserts," the market for baking competitions is saturated, especially since there are so many unexplored possibilities:

PRIME CUT: THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GREAT BUTCHER (Spike TV)
You can beat the heat, but you can't beat our meat!  On tonight's episode, controversy erupts as the nine remaining contestants are each given an exotic animal to slaughter, break down, and debone: Fan favorite, Rabbi Ethan "The Shvitzer" Goldfarb balks at butchering a wombat, which he declares "tref."

And, why not:

WICKED AWESOME: AMERICA'S NEXT GREAT CANDLEMAKER (HGTV)
Wax ON! Former porn star Jenna Jameson challenges the contestants to make a candle that can double as a female gratification tool.

TOP COLLECTOR: WORLD'S BEST TOLLBOOTH ATTENDANT (The Travel Channel)
Life in the EZ-Pass Lane.  Can anyone defeat the favorite, Tollmate3000, the state-of-the-art scanning device that's been mowing down all competitors since being installed on a stretch of I-80 outside Chicago?  Tune in to find out.

Personally, I'm most looking forward to Comedy Central's offering, DEAD FUNNY: AMERICA'S MOST HILARIOUS CORPSE.  Competition promises to be stiff.  Sorry.

Go Inflesh Your Irmus

The sentence unfolds, word after word, leading the curious reader to the revelation at sentence end, and this exemplifies 'irmus.'

I love discovering new words, if for no other reason than to better equip myself for a game of "Scrabble."  'Irmus' wouldn't provide a whole lot of points (only 7, unless one makes strategic use of bonus squares), and it may not even appear in Scrabble dictionaries--it doesn't show up on dictionary.com.  But the word--if the novelist Ann Beattie is to be believed (and novelists always tell the truth, right?)--does exist and refers to a tool of the literary trade, meaning“not until the end of a passage does the reader fully understand what is being spoken of.”

So if ever a writer kept you in suspense, pulling you along to a sentence's shocking climax?  You got irmused!
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You may remember yesterday.  I don't, but you may.  And if you do remember yesterday, you remember that "The Solipsist" featured news about how a number of students at elite colleges are opting out of the physical sciences and into easier majors in social sciences, humanities, or gym.  Anyway, when I read the original Times article that inspired that piece, I was struck by this sentence:

“We’re two years into that experiment and, quite honestly, it’s probably going to take 5 to 10 years before we’re really able to inflesh the whole curriculum with this project-based learning,” Dean Kilpatrick says. ("Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It's Just So Darn Hard)"

"Inflesh"?  According, again, to dictionary.com, to "inflesh" is to "incarnate."  This makes perfect sense as the root of "incarnate" ("carne") means "meat" or "flesh" (as in "carnivore," or "chili con carne").  In other words, to "inflesh" is to "make into meat" or, less literally, to "make real." 

A couple of interesting points:

1) The dictionary definition ("incarnate") is arguably a more sophisticated word than the word it is defining ("inflesh").

2) "Inflesh" may mean the same thing as "incarnate" but it has the added advantage of sounding kinda dirty.

3) Peter Kilpatrick, the dean of engineering at Notre Dame, apparently doesn't know the difference between "infleshing" (making real) and "infusing" (causing to penetrate), which is what he most likely meant--to spread the idea of "hands-on" science learning throughout the entire engineering curriculum.  Not a big deal, I suppose, but when this trained engineer builds something, I hope he doesn't mix up infleshing and infusing.  The results could get sticky.

The Tough Get Going, Going, Gone

From the "Well, I Could Have Told Them THAT" file: Science is hard.  They don't call 'em the "hard sciences" for nix.

As America laments its slippage in the world rankings of science education--we currently rank somewhere between Antarctica and Hogwarts--it turns out there is a perfectly reasonable explanation: Science majors at the nation's premier institutes of higher learning--being, as they are. quite brilliant, after all--have decided that advanced classes in calculus and physics hardly merit the slog.  Why struggle through a science curriculum when the likely reward after completing doctoral studies is simply overwhelming student loans and a slim possibility of a tenure-track university position or slightly more remunerative research work in industry?  Why not use those math smarts to come up with the next economy-wrecking financial shenanigan that will at least reward you handsomely until the bubble bursts?

University science departments have in some cases revamped their curricula to focus more on hands-on activities, allowing students to "do" science rather than just "study" it.  A good strategy, and one that other non-scientific disciplines might consider emulating.  Indeed, while college administrators lament the fact that science majors opt out of "hard" majors for "easier" ones like the humanities, the solution may rest only partially in making the sciences more palatable.  Maybe we should also make the "easy" majors less desirable, i.e., harder.  Just as science majors should "do" science, so, too, should those majoring in social sciences and the humanities "do" those fields.  Primarily, this means researching and, especially, writing--writing prolifically, writing constantly, writing exhaustingly.

America might then not only lose fewer budding Einsteins in our nation's science programs; America might also gain a few more Roths or Vonneguts or Chabons (take your pick) and a few less Dan Browns.

Monday Miscellany

I NEVER REALIZED. . . .

Last week on "Colbert," food journalist and perennial killjoy Michael Pollan offered a simple maxim for healthier snacking: "If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple," he said, "you're not hungry."

Apparently, I have NEVER been hungry in my life!  Who knew?

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THE CRANKY KILLER

Wilford Brimley has been hawking diabetes supplies for, like, thirty years and counting.  Kinda makes you wonder how fatal the disease really is.

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AT LEAST NOVEMBER HAS ONLY 30 DAYS

Last November brought us NaNoWriMo, annoying shorthand for "National Novel Writing Month."  The idea, propagated by people with way too much time on their hands and way too much faith in the creative capabilities of the online public, was that people should, in one month, write a novel.  Didn't have to be good (I think Dan Brown's last book was a NaNoWriMo project), didn't have to be published, didn't even have to make sense (see again, Dan Brown).  Success was simply a question of unleashing one's creative spirit.

Apparently, this proved too difficult.

This November brings us the far-filthier sounding NaBloPoMo--National Blog-Posting Month.  The idea here is that people commit to writing a blog-post a day, every day this month.

Pardon me while I wax sardonic.

WOW!  A blog-post EVERY day!  For a whole MONTH!  Insanity!  How can these faceless NaBloPoMoHos expect ANYONE to generate a whole THOUGHT every day, much less express it in the form of sentences and (shudder) paragraphs!  I implore people NOT to try this.  A post a day for a whole month--no human mind can be expected to generate such quantities!

Here endeth the 1,062nd "Solipsist."  Yeesh!

Apple and the Art of Motorcycle Obsolescence

According to Frederick Seidel, if I didn't have an iPad, I'd be Easy Rider.  In his article in today's Times, Seidel explains that, in his day, young men dreamt of riding off on an Italian import--whether a brand new Ducati sport bike or Sophia Loren mattered little.  Now, however, the era of the shiny handheld object may spell an end to the era of the shiny straddled object.

I'm not sure I accept his thesis.  Certainly, iPads, iPods, and iPhones have iSwept the iWorld and evoke feelings of sublimated lust in the hearts of many a young man (and woman, and not-so-young technophiles of both sexes).  But there's a certain non-sequitur quality to Seidel's logic, which, if I understand it correctly, Jane Austen might have paraphrased as, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man, not in possession of a motorcycle, must be in want of an Apple gadget."

Personally, if I had to exchange my iPad for any Italian import, I'd go with Marisa Tomei--or, heck, even Sophia Loren.  Who needs motorcycles?