One of the tricks screen writers and playwrights use to pull you into the finale of a story is the tell-off. You know what I’m talking about. It is the monolog or the heavily one-sided dialog where one party reads the riot act to the other. The best tell-offs are dispensed with some verbal whup-ass and topped with liberal dollup of comeuppance on a big honkin’ slice of just deserts. My Gawd, it’s some kinda good!
In the play I was in recently, my character was told off or shouted down by three other characters. The tell-off and a chase scene are the staples of American theatre and cinema.
Here is a link to an editorial addressed to the president of SUNY Albany, found in the journal Genome Biology. So, president Gerrge M. Philip has been told-off in no uncertain terms. Now, somebody in a red Fez has to chase him through a seedy bazaar in Marrakech with goats and chickens scattering everywhere for the total dramatic effect. It’s the natural order of things.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Gaussling – fascinating link, I’m a little curious about how you came upon it. The author will be at LocalU this winter. In any case – great post!
I think I found it at Metafilter.
http://www.metafilter.com/
It might have been at Arts & Letters Daily.
http://www.aldaily.com/
the reason that humanities classes have low enrollment is not because students these days are clamoring for more relevant courses; it’s because administrators like you, and spineless faculty, have stopped setting distribution requirements and started allowing students to choose their own academic programs
Unversities boast about their admissions, their courses, and their sports teams. No school boasts about its graduates. The most unpleasant insubordinate sonsofbitches always seem to be the most successful. Uncle Al exhorts Gentle Reader to find even one U of M program for the Gifted
http://www.diversity.umich.edu/programs/
http://www.diversity.umich.edu/schools/
Management by metrics is about process not product. Baby Kim of North Korea smote South Korea with fire and death. South Korea issued a strongly worded statement in reprisal. South Korea will bleed, big time. We did that in lower Manhattan. Blood is everywhere – and all of it is ours. A university is a society’s last chance to do better.
I think baby Kim was burnishing his resume for the Emperor position.