Working at the outermost boundaries of human thought...

I first heard that phrase decades ago from the lips of Kingman Brewster, president of  Yale. I was a a working-stiff reporter, and Connecticut Bureau Chief John Armstrong sent me over to interview him about a Yale tuition increase.

The charming Dr. Brewster explained that the new and complicated tuition structure would actually save money for the students even as it fattened Yale coffers.*  Besides, even if it didn't, it was a small price for student access to professors "working at the outermost boundaries of human thought."

I filed a report including but short-shrifting that bit of puffery and concentrated on trying to explain what the incredibly dense set of new tuition rules would actually mean to Yalies. But I never forgot about all that ivory tower outermosting, and I have since heard it repeated verbatim by academic after academic -- usually when they were in their fund-raising mode.

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Now it is quite a long way in both time and space from Brewster-at-Yale to little Buena Vista college down in Storm Lake where a Ph.D'ed lady decided to outermost think about overdosing her students with coffee.


The study began Monday afternoon and after a couple of hours, the students began showing the effects of excessive caffeine ingestion and were taken to Buena Vista Regional Medical Center in Storm Lake. Medical authorities estimate the students ingested about 6,000 milligrams of caffeine.


A dose becomes a threat of  (sic) body functions at about 6,200 milligrams. The students remain hospitalized for observation. University Dean of Students Doctor Meg McKeon, in a University-wide e-mail, said the administration is very concerned and is conducting an investigation.


I don't usually think in milligrams, so I looked it up on the internet. The caffeine content of a cup of coffee varies from roughly 95mg to 200mg. The high-end concentration seems to be about what speed freaks use when they can't get hold of their meth contact.

So, Ms. Professor fed the kids the equivalent of some 30 cups of high-test Arbuckles in about two hours? Enough to send them to the emergency room.

Pardon me for suggesting that the outermost limits of common sense were violated. And for suggesting that, in addition to the suspension, this outermost thinker ought to be kicked soundly and repeatedly in her outermost ass.

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*Dr. Brewster, needless to say, was a Keynesian.

... or even above the fold

Fox news hired Dick Morris this morning to tell us who should run under Romney.

Rubio, he said. No one else.

The Fox chatterer said, but, but, but, Rubio isn't experienced. He's just a first-term senator...

Blowing up cows and stealing the hookers' rubbers

Sometimes you shouldn't read below the fold.

In the high Colorado Rockies a bunch of cows sought winter shelter in a cabin and froze to death. Their frosted corpses are worrying the game wardens who are thinking of  converting them to pink slime via dynamite or C4 or something. It's a big controversy. Fer krissake.  Since they're still frozen, why not get local radio to announce "Free beef; first-come, first served; don't forget your rechargeable recipro saws."

In New York the guardians of our morals have been confiscating the working girls' condom inventory. It's evidence, don't you know, that they intended to profit by  violating  the Seventh Commandment as it is interpreted by the pure souls in Albany and Gracie Mansion. (if you dare utter "Huh? Spitzer? Weiner?," you are a cynical anti-government sorehead and should lose your free-speech rights.)  The hooker-rubber controversy is costing millions, generating ill-will among the joy-for-pay set,  and stimulating the AIDS contagion. How about a moratorium, say for ten years, on all government cervix oversight? If it creates a hole lot of trouble we can always return to a program of sex-by-official-permit only. (Yes, whoredom can be a sleazy empire, just like New York politics.  If that's important to you, you should, in fairness, agitate to outlaw both.)

And don't even get me started about a few million the feds spent on a top-to-bottom study of gay men's penis sizes.

Maybe the Victorian-era British Colonial Ministry had the long and the short of it. Perhaps some countries are not ready for self-government.

Pistol-packin' Pippa

Lay that pistol down, Babe...

What is it about leggy but not very bright Brit royalites that gets them into so much trouble when they go to Paris?

To be fair, Pippa herself is not accused of waving a semi-auto around in Paris traffic. It was her pal, the guy driving, who is said to have "jokingly"  pointed the pistol at the paparazzi. Still, the Fleet Street tabs have pretty much convicted her of unseemliness while in the vicinity of a firearm. I think that's an actual crime in the Sceptred Isle, but it may be merely a social faux pas in La Belle France.

Thank God for the Surete. We will get to the bottom of this.