Quote:Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN  FEB. 27, 2015


Leonard Nimoy, best known for playing the character Spock in the Star Trek television shows and films, died at 83.

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

His artistic pursuits — poetry, photography and music in addition to acting — ranged far beyond the United Federation of Planets, but it was as Mr. Spock that Mr. Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and blessing: “Live long and prosper” (from the Vulcan “Dif-tor heh smusma”).


As part of the Yiddish Book Center Wexler Oral History Project, Leonard Nimoy explains the origin of the Vulcan hand signal used by Spock, his character in the “Star Trek” series.

Mr. Nimoy, who was teaching Method acting at his own studio when he was cast in the original “Star Trek” television series in the mid-1960s, relished playing outsiders, and he developed what he later admitted was a mystical identification with Spock, the lone alien on the starship’s bridge.

Yet he also acknowledged ambivalence about being tethered to the character, expressing it most plainly in the titles of two autobiographies: “I Am Not Spock,” published in 1977, and “I Am Spock,” published in 1995.

In the first, he wrote, “In Spock, I finally found the best of both worlds: to be widely accepted in public approval and yet be able to continue to play the insulated alien through the Vulcan character.”

“Star Trek,” which had its premiere on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966, made Mr. Nimoy a star. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the franchise, called him “the conscience of ‘Star Trek’ ” — an often earnest, sometimes campy show that employed the distant future (as well as some primitive special effects by today’s standards) to take on social issues of the 1960s.

His stardom would endure. Though the series was canceled after three seasons because of low ratings, a cultlike following — the conference-holding, costume-wearing Trekkies, or Trekkers (the designation Mr. Nimoy preferred) — coalesced soon after “Star Trek” went into syndication.

The fans’ devotion only deepened when “Star Trek” was spun off into an animated show, various new series and an uneven parade of movies starring much of the original television cast, including — besides Mr. Nimoy — William Shatner (as Capt. James T. Kirk), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), George Takei (the helmsman, Sulu), James Doohan (the chief engineer, Scott), Nichelle Nichols (the chief communications officer, Uhura) and Walter Koenig (the navigator, Chekov).

When the director J. J. Abrams revived the “Star Trek” film franchise in 2009, with an all-new cast — including Zachary Quinto as Spock — he included a cameo part for Mr. Nimoy, as an older version of the same character. Mr. Nimoy also appeared in the 2013 follow-up, “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

His zeal to entertain and enlighten reached beyond “Star Trek” and crossed genres. He had a starring role in the dramatic television series “Mission: Impossible” and frequently performed onstage, notably as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” His poetry was voluminous, and he published books of his photography.

He also directed movies, including two from the “Star Trek” franchise, and television shows. And he made records, singing pop songs as well as original songs about “Star Trek,” and gave spoken-word performances — to the delight of his fans and the bewilderment of critics.

But all that was subsidiary to Mr. Spock, the most complex member of the Enterprise crew, who was both one of the gang and a creature apart engaged at times in a lonely struggle with his warring racial halves.

In one of his most memorable “Star Trek” performances, Mr. Nimoy tried to follow in the tradition of two actors he admired, Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff, who each played a monstrous character — Quasimodo and the Frankenstein monster — who is transformed by love.

In Episode 24, which was first shown on March 2, 1967, Mr. Spock is indeed transformed. Under the influence of aphrodisiacal spores he discovers on the planet Omicron Ceti III, he lets free his human side and announces his love for Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland), a woman he had once known on Earth. In this episode, Mr. Nimoy brought to Spock’s metamorphosis not only warmth, compassion and playfulness, but also a rarefied concept of alienation.

“I am what I am, Leila,” Mr. Spock declares after the spores’ effect has worn off and his emotions are again in check. “And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.”

Born in Boston on March 26, 1931, Leonard Simon Nimoy was the second son of Max and Dora Nimoy, Ukrainian immigrants and Orthodox Jews. His father worked as a barber.

From the age of 8, Leonard acted in local productions, winning parts at a community college, where he performed through his high school years. In 1949, after taking a summer course at Boston College, he traveled to Hollywood, though it wasn’t until 1951 that he landed small parts in two movies, “Queen for a Day” and “Rhubarb.”



He continued to be cast in little-known movies, although he did presciently play an alien invader in a cult serial called “Zombies of the Stratosphere,” and in 1961 he had a minor role on an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” His first starring movie role came in 1952 with “Kid Monk Baroni,” in which he played a disfigured Italian street-gang leader who becomes a boxer.

Mr. Nimoy served in the Army for two years, rising to sergeant and spending 18 months at Fort McPherson in Georgia, where he presided over shows for the Army’s Special Services branch. He also directed and starred as Stanley in the Atlanta Theater Guild’s production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” before receiving his final discharge in November 1955.

He then returned to California, where he worked as a soda jerk, movie usher and cabdriver while studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He achieved wide visibility in the late 1950s and early 1960s on television shows like “Wagon Train,” “Rawhide” and “Perry Mason.” Then came “Star Trek.”

Mr. Nimoy returned to college in his 40s and earned a master’s degree in Spanish from Antioch University Austin, an affiliate of Antioch College in Ohio, in 1978. Antioch University later awarded Mr. Nimoy an honorary doctorate.

Mr. Nimoy directed two of the Star Trek movies, “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” (1984) and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986), which he helped write. In 1991, the same year that he resurrected Mr. Spock on two episodes of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Mr. Nimoy was also the executive producer and a writer of the movie “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.”

He then directed the hugely successful comedy “Three Men and a Baby” (1987), a far cry from his science-fiction work, and appeared in made-for-television movies. He received an Emmy nomination for the 1982 movie “A Woman Called Golda,” in which he portrayed the husband of Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel, who was played by Ingrid Bergman. It was the fourth Emmy nomination of his career — the other three were for his “Star Trek” work — although he never won.

Mr. Nimoy’s marriage to the actress Sandi Zober ended in divorce. Besides his wife, he is survived by his children, Adam and Julie Nimoy; a stepson, Aaron Bay Schuck; and six grandchildren; one great-grandchild, and an older brother, Melvin.

Though his speaking voice was among his chief assets as an actor, the critical consensus was that his music was mortifying. Mr. Nimoy, however, was undaunted, and his fans seemed to enjoy the camp of his covers of songs like “If I Had a Hammer.” (His first album was called “Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space.”)

From 1977 to 1982, Mr. Nimoy hosted the syndicated series “In Search Of...,” which explored mysteries like the Loch Ness Monster and UFOs. He also narrated “Ancient Mysteries” on the History Channel from 1995 to 2003 and appeared in commercials, including two with Mr. Shatner for Priceline.com. He provided the voice for animated characters in “Transformers: The Movie,” in 1986, and “The Pagemaster,” in 1994.

In 2001 he voiced the king of Atlantis in the Disney animated movie “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” and in 2005 he furnished voice-overs for the computer game Civilization IV. More recently, he had a recurring role on the science-fiction series “Fringe” and was heard, as the voice of Spock, in an episode of the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”

Mr. Nimoy was an active supporter of the arts as well. The Thalia, a venerable movie theater on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, now a multi-use hall that is part of Symphony Space, was renamed the Leonard Nimoy Thalia in 2002.

He also found his voice as a writer. Besides his autobiographies, he published “A Lifetime of Love: Poems on the Passages of Life” in 2002. Typical of Mr. Nimoy’s simple free verse are these lines: “In my heart/Is the seed of the tree/Which will be me.”

In later years, he rediscovered his Jewish heritage, and in 1991 he produced and starred in “Never Forget,” a
television movie based on the story of a Holocaust survivor who sued a neo-Nazi organization of Holocaust deniers.

In 2002, having illustrated his books of poetry with his photographs, Mr. Nimoy published “Shekhina,” a book devoted to photography with a Jewish theme, that of the feminine aspect of God. His black-and-white photographs of nude and seminude women struck some Orthodox Jewish leaders as heretical, but Mr. Nimoy asserted that his work was consistent with the teaching of the kabbalah.

His religious upbringing also influenced the characterization of Spock. The character’s split-fingered salute, he often explained, had been his idea: He based it on the kohanic blessing, a manual approximation of the Hebrew letter shin, which is the first letter in Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God.

“To this day, I sense Vulcan speech patterns, Vulcan social attitudes and even Vulcan patterns of logic and emotional suppression in my behavior,” Mr. Nimoy wrote years after the original series ended.

But that wasn’t such a bad thing, he discovered. “Given the choice,” he wrote, “if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock.”

Lucas Hoepfl, a.k.a. Lucas Joseph Gollin-Hoepfl, the son of the sister of disgraced stalker George Gollin, appears to be giving away more than a few hints about his sexual orientation--or should we say disorientation?

Given that George Gollin's daughter Chlamydia Loots-Gollin has been out of the closet for many years as a self-proclaimed "Radical Lesbian Cheerleader" as well as a lustfully active member of the "Gay Straight Alliance," it should be no surprise that depravity seems to run in the genes of all the Gollin offspring.


It's a village in Poland. Yeah, right.

In case the "Brony" shirt didn't give it away completely, the latest posts at his Facebook page seem to underline the point. He signed the petition to "Protect LGBT Youth from Conversion Efforts." Since selfish, self-serving self-interest is always the primary Gollin motivation, it seems pretty clear why he did that.



And look who was invited to join the "Greater Dayton GLSEN Student Committee."


Is Lucas Hoepfl really a pole smoker, or just planning a run for Congress like dear old Uncle George? Happy fisting, Gollin pervs!

Anyone have any background on this site as it is barely mentioned here (twice I believe)? I see various DI regulars there.

I wanted to see how often forums like DI appeared in news stories and ran across this one from 2002 and did not see it mentioned here.

'Mail Bomb' Attack Threatens Web Site Popular With Diploma-Mill Watchdogs (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2002) Archived: Highbeam

This is all that is available for free,

Quote:The survival of Degreeinfo.com, an online forum on distance learning that is popular among diploma-mill watchdogs, students, and some college officials, has been threatened by anonymous attackers who barraged the Web site's domain-name server with 65,000 messages in one day.

The Web site's administrator, Chip White, says he doesn't know who perpetrated the "mail bomb" attack but suspects it was a diploma mill. He says the messages were sent by only a few people -- perhaps only one person -- but were made to appear as if they had been sent by many more.

"These vigilantes don't like what we're saying," says Mr. White, an administrator for a California-based health-care company. …

I made the mistake of trying to inform people of Ashworth's National Transfer Network at DI without knowing all of the back story on these forums. I am slowly getting caught up now.

As part of the debate I wound up with a (IMO) useful argument against RA being necessary.

I did some simple job search queries and found some empirical confirmation that academic snobbery is in academia.

"Regionally Accredited" = 3,800 Job Postings (almost entirely colleges and universities)

Out of 3.7 million job listings that is 0.1% of jobs explicitly requiring a "Regionally Accredited" degree.

The prestige argument was also rather interesting as a reason given not to go to an NA school was lack of "prestige". Yet, no one would argue any of the Big 3 or any other RA schools they frequently recommend had any "prestige".

And apparently having New Mexico Junior College on my resume as opposed to Ashworth College will make the employers swoon, as it obvious projects educational excellence of the highest caliber being RA.

Finally they pimp StraighterLine, which I have no problem with except for their hypocrisy of it being an unaccredited, for-profit corporation that does not offer financial aid.

Almost forgot, when you need to figure out which schools take NA credits you are just supposed to use Google and people who don't like to use government bureaucracies to do their own financial aid are lazy. If you argue with this "advice" you do not belong in college.

Quote:How Much Is That Psychology Degree Worth?

Ann Coulter | Jan 28, 2015




The Republican leadership in Congress still hasn't held hearings on why college is so expensive, although I proposed the idea two weeks ago. Of course, it's been a month since the GOP took control of Congress, and they also haven't voided Obama's unconstitutional executive amnesty, passed e-Verify, a fence bill or the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act.

Democrats are on offense all the time, even when they've just had their legs cut off. They announce absurd agenda items and then indignantly demand to know why Republicans are refusing to deal with the free unicorn-rides proposal. Obama is a lame-duck president and, three months ago, his party was slaughtered in midterm elections. And yet, I gather that his State of the Union address consisted of a litany of insanely expensive, utterly pointless ideas.

And Republicans fall for it every time. They consider it a major victory to come back with a free-market approach to surrender.

In response to Obama's "free" community college idea, Republicans should say: We're not giving you anything, and, in fact, we're demanding answers from the entire "higher ed" establishment. You'll be surprised how liberating and fun it is to go on offense, Republicans.

The GOP needs to hold tobacco company-style hearings, hauling in the presidents of various universities and asking them to justify their multimillion-dollar salaries.

We want professors explaining, under penalty of perjury, exactly how much they make per hour for their rigorous schedules of two classes a week, summers off, and full-year "sabbaticals" every few terms.

Also, we'd like to know how driving the getaway car for a cop-killer constitutes a qualification to teach college.

College professors relentlessly hound the rest of society for its crimes -- racism, sexism, "white privilege" -- look what you're doing to the environment! Why are we paying them, again? There's no visible reason most of these people should be teaching at all. How about they explain their value to the taxpayers who subsidize their cushy lives?

Other than engineers, economists and quarterbacks, no one acquires any marketable knowledge at college. The sole purpose of a degree is to function as a substitute IQ test. If employers were allowed to give applicants 15-minute intelligence tests, they'd have the exact same information as knowing what college a person attended.

But they can't do that, so families have to spend a quarter of a million dollars to give their kids the parchment equivalent of an IQ score. High school kids who get into good schools should present employers with their college acceptance letters and skip the going-to-college part.

Republicans need to force colleges to issue reports, just like drug companies, attesting to the average cost, and the average salary, for every degree. It will cost you $160,000 to receive a degree in Spanish literature and will take you 88 years to pay that back.

Trust Ann -- liberals will go wild. That's how you'll know you've struck gold.

They will scream bloody murder, accuse Republicans of "McCarthyism," say it's too burdensome to collect this information and how can you put a dollar value on a college education?

They better be able to put a dollar value on a college degree! That's how it's being sold. Obama doesn't say it's important to go to college to learn to think analytically, read critically or be exposed to different ideas -- none of which occurs at most colleges, anyway.

No, that's not the pitch. The pitch is: You're going to fail in this economy without a college degree!

If colleges really believe their product is worth anything, why don't they guarantee their own student loans? Why should taxpayers be on the hook for everyone's tuition?

According to the colleges, their graduates are going to earn all sorts of money! At least that's what they say when they're conning teenagers into taking out colossal student loans.

"It's burdensome" is not an excuse accepted by the government in any other context. It doesn't work for businesses being forced to come up with reams of information for the IRS, the EPA or OSHA. And the taxpayer isn't on the hook for the deceptive promises of any other industry -- except hucksters for home mortgages and student loans.

I would like to hear college presidents explain that what they do is totally different from any other company.

Democrats need to be exposed as hustlers for the most fraudulent, overpriced scam in the country. There's no other industry that has politicians flacking for it, much less conniving to prevent consumers from getting truthful information about the merchandise.

Going after Big Education is all upside for the GOP. College professors and administrators already vote 98 percent for the Democrats. In fact, it's a triple-play for Republicans: They would punish a liberal constituency, strike a blow against the principal vehicle of liberal indoctrination in America, and the middle class will love it.

Quote:Awakening to the damage done by teachers' unions
By Washington Examiner | January 28, 2015 | 5:00 am

When conservatives think of education reform, they tend to regard it as their own fight. They bring up the charter and voucher programs promoted by Republicans such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. They mention Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose 2011 public-sector union reforms have already saved his state's school districts at least $3 billion dollars and averted the need to fire teachers in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

But Democrats also want their children to get a good education, and as a result something new and bipartisan is happening in the world of education policy. There appears to be a great awakening across the ideological spectrum to the fact that primary and secondary education is failing badly and that the entrenched enemies of reform — the teachers' unions — are much too powerful. The unions are a key impediment to much-needed education reforms. Everyone knows it and now more people are willing to say it out loud.

For all of his faults, one pleasant surprise of President Obama's administration has been his display of independence from the teachers' unions that oppose anything that might create standards, competition, or accountability for the often deplorable quality of their members' work. Even Obama's promotion of Common Core, which many conservatives oppose for different reasons, has rankled the unions because it would subject teachers to clear standards and measurements of success.

New York's Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, also deserves bipartisan recognition for what he is doing in this vital policy area. The recent corruption indictment of anti-reform state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, makes it more likely that much or all of the governor's education agenda will pass.

Cuomo has complained that the standards intended to evaluate teachers in his state are “baloney” — only one percent of teachers have been found to be ineffective even though two-thirds of students cannot read or do math at grade level. Thus, the governor has conditioned a $1.1 billion increase in education spending this year on reforms that would toughen standards and make only the best teachers get tenure.

The deal making method that Cuomo has employed is part of a broader pattern that shows he is serious about reform. In the face of opposition from his fellow Democrats, he has shrewdly packaged measures they don't like (such as tax credits for donors to private school scholarships) into bills that include measures they want (such as extending in-state tuition to illegal immigrants).

Cuomo has also signed a law that Bill de Blasio, New York City's anti-reform mayor, opposed, making it easier for charter schools to use empty space in public school buildings. The governor is trying to raise the cap on the number of charter schools in the state from 460 to 560.

Cuomo is not anti-union — in fact, the New York Times notes that several labor unions back his private scholarship bill, hoping it will benefit their members' children. The teachers' unions, however, withheld their endorsement from Cuomo in his 2014 re-election. This frees his hand to pursue true reform, for he is not beholden to them.

It could hurt his national aspirations, about which he has not been shy. But still, he is doing what he was elected to do — making decisions that better the lives of people in his state. Cuomo may be spotting a trend sooner than some of his colleagues. An understanding that schools needs to be prized from the sclerotic grip of the teachers' unions is an admirable departure from the reflexive defense of the status quo (with pleas for more money) that have long passed for education policy in the Democratic Party.

Porn producers like Thomas Vernon "Chip" White surely agree, RA is the Gold Standard...for finding more porn actors.

Quote:UTEP Graduate Receives Death Threats After Deemed Top Porn Star
Updated: Thursday, January 8, 2015 | Chrisdyann Uribe


?

EL PASO, Texas - A 21-year-old [regionally accredited] University of Texas at El Paso graduate is the center of Lebanese controversy for being dubbed the queen of an adult film site.

Mia Khalifa, born in Lebanon, graduated from UTEP with a B.A. in history before becoming involved in the porn industry. Recently she was ranked the mostly popular actress on a notorious adult film site. In Lebanon, she is the center of media attention scrutinized for posing in scenes wearing a hijab and also for showing her Lebanese tattoos. One of the tattoos is the beginning of the Lebanese National Anthem another is of a Lebanese Forces Cross.

The Lebanese community is saying she's shaming the country by appearing in porn with the country's anthem on her. In an interview with Newsweek, Khalifa strikes back saying, "They're embarrassed I'm 'claiming' them--as if I had a choice. I was born there."

Khalifa's family has disowned her and she feels guilty for for [sic] putting the spotlight on them saying it was never her intention.

Khalifa also receives online death threats through Twitter for her adult performances. She fights back tweeting, "Doesn't the Middle East have more important things to worry about besides me? How about finding a president? Or containing ISIS?"

Khalifa said she doesn't plan on making a career out of porn forever and wishes the media would leave her family alone. In the same interview after being asked if it was worth losing her family she replies, "Can't say it's worth it," she says. "But I can't self-pity, because I consciously made this decision myself."

Your check's in the mail.  I love you.  Regional accreditation is the gold standard.


Lisa Haynes

Quote:A Degree in Question
January 2, 2015
By Ry Rivard

A community college official in Tennessee retroactively received a degree from [regionally accredited] Duquesne University in Pennsylvania this year despite failing to complete required coursework a decade ago, according to an unusual cross-state investigation by Tennessee auditors.

The audit by the Tennessee Board of Regents focused on a controversial Chattanooga State Community College official, Lisa Haynes.

The longtime president of Chattanooga State, James Catanzaro, retired this week amid questions about Haynes. She was his executive assistant and then the college’s chief innovations officer. Catanzaro met Haynes in Barbados before she was hired by the college.

For Tennessee auditors’ purpose, the key questions were about Haynes’ qualifications. Even though a job opening in fall 2013 required a degree she did not have at the time, Chattanooga State paid for her to fly from Barbados to Tennessee for an interview, hired her even before other candidates for the job finished their interviews and then sponsored her work visa.

For Duquesne, the audit raises questions about why the university granted a degree now to someone who does not appear to have met the university’s graduation requirements a decade ago.



Haynes, according to the Tennessee auditors, was not qualified on paper for the Chattanooga State job because she was hired in August 2013 without having the undergraduate degree required for the job. Duquesne retroactively awarded her the degree in September 2014 – for reasons that have not been fully explained, though it seems likely the university waived a graduation requirement or allowed Haynes to substitute a course she finished for a required course she did not.

“Duquesne awards degrees only to those students who legitimately earn them,” university spokeswoman Bridget Fare said in an email.

While at Duquesne, Haynes failed to complete a course that fulfilled a requirement for her communications bachelor's degree, even though she attempted the course three different times, according to auditors. Haynes had enough raw credit hours to graduate but lacked a required course.

A Duquesne official told the auditors the university did not grant Haynes a degree in 2005 because she had not met the department’s graduation requirements for her major. Even though “no apparent changes occurred since,” the auditors said last month, the university agreed in September to issue her a “back-dated degree.”

According to the audit, Duquesne’s director of core curriculum “did not disagree” that Haynes had failed to meet graduation requirements in 2005. But the director said that Duquesne officials could waive required courses or allow a student to substitute another course for a required one. The director did not tell the auditors if Duquesne had allowed this in Haynes's case, but auditors said it seems likely that this is how the university granted Haynes a degree.

Fare, the Duquesne spokeswoman, said the university’s decision to award Haynes a degree “rested on extensive analysis by faculty members and administrators of the available information and a desire, within the parameters set by appropriate academic judgment, to recognize the work in the timeframe it actually occurred.” Haynes’s situation was reviewed by her old department, its dean, the university provost and the president.

Fare said that, generally speaking, colleges and universities do occasionally waive requirements or allow one course to be substituted for another.

Catanzaro said he could not comment about what Duquesne did, but has said in the past the degree question resulted from a mixup of some kind.

“She earned the degree in 2005, and that’s what they did, they awarded the degree retroactively to 2005, recognizing that she did,” he said.

At one point during the auditing process, Catanzaro told an auditor to take a “more enlightened view” of degrees. He also downplayed the significance of a degree and noted several successful business people who do not have college degrees, according to the audit.

Haynes, who did not comment on a previous story, did not respond to an email seeking comment earlier this week.

The Tennessee Board of Regents’ audit came after people on the campus began to raise questions about how Haynes got the job.  

Back in October, roughly a third of the college's faculty backed a no-confidence vote in Catanzaro’s leadership.

Catanzaro said he was in Barbados visiting the ambassador to the country when he met Haynes.

Catanzaro said Haynes's job was to help build an entrepreneurial culture at Chattanooga State. He has said that she’s working with the University of West Indies in Barbados to bring Barbadians to Chattanooga.

The audit questioned the importance of her work for the college, as well as travel expenses incurred by her and by Catanzaro on trips that, according to the audit, did not have clearly documented purposes or schedules.

Representatives of the Duquesne Faculty Senate did not return multiple emails seeking comment about the situation.

Who is Farhan Zaidi?  Dodger fans already know, but for most everyone else:

Quote:Farhan Zaidi is the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Zaidi was born in Canada and raised in the Philippines. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PHD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He briefly worked for the Boston Consulting Group and the Sporting News website between MIT and Berkeley.

While at Berkeley, he read the book Moneyball and it changed his life. He saw a job posting for a baseball operations position with the Oakland Athletics and sent out his resume, beating out 1,000 other applicants for the job. He was a data analysis sabermetrics assistant when he started. His boss with the Athletics, Billy Beane called him "absolutely brilliant" and credited him with the acquisition of Cuban star Yoenis Céspedes.

For the 2013 season he was promoted by the Athletics to the post of Director of Baseball Operations and added Assistant General Manager to his title in 2014.

On November 6, 2014, he was hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers as their new General Manager.

Zaidi is one of two Muslim executives in Major League Baseball. He is of Pakistani ancestry. He is the first Muslim General Manager of any American pro sports franchise.

Quote:

Abstract
Top of Mind in Task-Based Environments and Choice Under Risk
by
Farhan Zaidi
Doctor of Philosophy in Economics
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Matthew Rabin, Chair

I examine psychological biases that influence “top-of-mind” status in task-based environments and choice under risk, and the implications of those biases for predicting and explaining consumer behavior in the field. I develop (in joint work with Jeff Holman) a model of prospective memory, defined as the capacity to recall tasks to be carried out in the future. Motivated by the economics and psychology literature on overconfidence, we introduce memory overconfidence into the model, and show that it leads to 1) inefficiently low rates of task completion, and 2) the prediction that the probability of task completion may vary inversely with the length of time allocated to completing the task. We discuss two instances where consumers face tasks that broadly fit our model – submitting rebates and cancelling negative-option subscriptions.

I then present empirical evidence of this latter instance through a field experiment with a membership-based website. I find that implementing “camouflage” pricing – that is, charging amounts such as $20.13 or $19.83 rather than “standard” amounts such as $20 or $19.95 – significantly lowers cancellation rates. Assuming that credit card statements can serve as a reminder to cancel unused subscriptions, and that the strength of this reminder is greater with standard amounts that tend to “stand out” on a bill and draw more attention than camouflage amounts, the lower cancellation rates in the camouflage-pricing groups are consistent with the prediction of our prospective memory model.

I also consider how what is top of mind may affect consumers’ choices under risk. I exploit a “natural experiment” from the trading card industry to find evidence that existing models of choice under risk may understate the extent to which salient outcomes affect the valuation of risky prospects. I track auction sales of a particular card that experienced a sudden jump in value, as well as auction sales of the sealed, unopened card boxes into which this card was randomly inserted at known odds. I estimate the price jumps for both the single card and the unopened boxes, and back out the “decision weight” that would reconcile these price movements. The estimated decision weight is well beyond the range of previous experimental estimates. I discuss how consumers’ attention to particularly salient or vivid outcomes (i.e., the extent to which they are top of mind) may provide an explanation for the result.