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Travel Photos

Yes, it's an art blog and doesn't have much to do with travel, but such is life. I have been ping ponging all over the place lately but I keep forgetting to take my camera with me. I managed to take a few snaps though.

(Click to see larger images)

In a hotel in Canberra I had this trippy ceiling that didn't let my eye rest. I think as an artist you just let an image take you where it wants to go, but this wallpaper on my ceiling just made me dizzy.

Most trees at home are green all year, so I found these trees interesting. There was something romantic about walking down this path, even if I was alone.. and freezing.

See the parrots in the grass? That's why they're called Grass Parrots I guess. I have always loved birds and get pretty excited when I see them in the wild. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Here's the view from my hotel in Melbourne.

Here's another view of Melbourne.

One more photo of Melbourne city.

Then I felt like I needed sun and warmth so I jumped in the car and headed North again. I have landed in the commercialized hippy town of Byron Bay. It's a strange combination of weekend hippies, far out hippies, wealthy retired people, surfers, and BMW driving yuppy types. Along with lots of Germans, Brits, Japanese, Americans, and a number of other nationalities.

Everytime I go to the Byron Bay lighthouse I seem to get wet.

One more Byron Bay photo.

I haven't decided what I'm doing or where I'm going next, but I check out on Wednesday so I better hurry up and figure it out

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Lawmakers May Seek More Federal Money for Public Universities

Washington — Four years after a federal study panel gave Congress a wish list for assisting American research universities, a group of leading lawmakers has decided it may not have gone far enough.

The lawmakers, including the chairmen of the House and Senate science panels, are asking the National Academies to compile the “top 10 actions that Congress, state governments, research universities, and others could take” to maintain the quality of American research universities and ensure their role in American economic growth.

“We are concerned that they are at risk,” the four lawmakers said, citing both the steadily improving quality of foreign universities and the declining level of state support for public universities in the United States.

The lawmakers included Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, chairman of the House science committee, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, chairwoman of the Senate subcommittee that handles science appropriations. The two others were Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican of Tennessee and a former U.S. education secretary, and Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, the top Republican on the House science committee.

They described their request as a bid for a follow-up to the “Gathering Storm” report of 2005, in which a National Academies committee assembled a list of the 20 most important improvements that Congress could make in federal support for research and education.

The recommendations included doubling federal spending on the physical sciences over seven years. Congress has taken steps in that direction, approving a .5-billion jump in federal research-and-development spending in an economic-stimulus measure enacted this year.

And President Obama last month proposed a .9-billion budget for the National Institutes of Health for the 2010 fiscal year, setting a baseline 4.7 percent higher than the agency’s final budget under President Bush, in 2008.

The request Monday by the lawmakers was sparked in part by a letter in February to Senator Alexander from Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities, who said the government needed to address a “growing imbalance between public and private research universities.”

“Such an initiative should target a limited number of institutions in each state, the flagship campuses,” Mr. Berdahl said. “To succeed, it would need to provide additional federal resources, supplementing and leveraging state support rather than supplanting it.” —Paul Basken

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Iraq Appeals Anew to Exiled Academics to Return Home

Iraq’s government has issued a fresh appeal to the country’s exiled scientists, urging them to come home to help rebuild the economy, the Reuters news agency reported.

More than 200 exiled Iraqi scientists have been invited to a three-day conference sponsored this week in Baghdad by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The goal: Persuade them to return.

“You, the Iraqi brains, are an important part of driving the path we are on,” Sadeq al-Rikabi, a political adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told the scientists. “We are happy to see … these brains come back again, and I hope their return will not be just for a short time.”

What was once among the Arab world’s most extensive university networks has been shattered by the sectarian violence that has beset the country since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. Hundreds of Iraqi professors were among those killed, and thousands of academics were driven into exile.

In recent months the violence seems to be abating, and Mr. al-Malaki’s office has set out an ambitious plan to return the country’s higher-education system to its former glory. Millions have been promised to send students to study overseas, and the government is keen to hook up Iraqi institutions with international partners. But what will be the key to the success of any plan to revive Iraqi higher education is the country’s ability to persuade Iraqi academics to return home.

So far, the Iraqi government says 700 professors from a range of academic fields have returned to the country. But among the scientists in Baghdad this week, Reuters reported that many had reservations about moving back to a country where civilians continue to be killed every day in gun and bomb attacks.

Mohammed al-Rubaie, a professor of genetic engineering at the University of Dublin, said he planned to make only short visits. “We do not want to come back [to stay], but there are ways,” he told Reuters. “Scientists could be invited for specific projects to give the benefit of their advice and experience. —Andrew Mills

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Trustees Defer College’s Plan to Rename Courses for Paid Sponsors

The City College of San Francisco’s Board of Trustees has temporarily repealed a plan to allow donors to sponsor classes that would otherwise be canceled, and to rename them in honor of their benefactors. The trustees said they had not been informed of the plan and needed to discuss it at a meeting on Thursday.

The college’s chancellor, Don Griffin, announced the plan on Monday but failed to notify the seven-member board beforehand. Board members told the San Francisco Chronicle they were irritated after they learned of the plan in Monday’s newspaper.

“Public education is not for sale,” Milton Marks, the board’s president, told the paper. “If someone wants to give money, that’s great. But getting publicity or feel-good points shouldn’t be necessary. It smacks of some sort of paternalism.”

Mr. Marks said there was no guarantee the proposal would ever be approved, but with the college facing cuts of -million to -million over the next few years, the board wasn’t ruling it out, either.

Since the plan was announced, no donors have offered the minimum ,000 gift to save a course, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, though several potential sponsors have asked if they could make partial donations. —Erica R. Hendry

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Liberty U. Makes Democratic and Republican Student Groups ‘Unofficial Clubs’

Liberty University has changed its policy on student groups, giving both its Democratic and Republican organizations a new status, “unofficial clubs,” according to The News & Advance, in Lynchburg, Va.

Last month the conservative Christian college took away the Democratic group’s official status. The policy shift allows its return.

Under the new policy, announced last weekend by Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr., both the Democratic and Republican student groups will be unofficial clubs. Unofficial clubs will be allowed to use the university’s name, but will not receive funds from it. They may endorse candidates whose views the university deems contrary to its mission without losing their status, but will not be allowed to use university facilities to endorse such candidates. —Beckie Supiano

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Arizona Lawmakers Agree to Put on Ballot a Proposed Ban on Affirmative-Action Preferences

Arizona is set to become the first state in which a proposed ban on affirmative-action preferences will be put on the ballot by the legislature, rather than through petitions submitted by voters.

The Arizona Senate today passed a measure — approved by the state’s House of Representatives a week ago — calling for a proposed ban on the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state agencies, to go before voters next year. Under the state’s Constitution, referenda approved by the Arizona Legislature go on the ballot without the governor’s approval.

The campaign on behalf of the measure had tried to place it on the Arizona ballot last November, but failed to gather enough petition signatures. Similar measures appeared on ballots last year in Colorado and Nebraska, with the Colorado measure losing narrowly and the Nebraska measure passing with 58 percent of the vote. Such measures also were passed in California in 1996, Washington State in 1998, and Michigan in 2006.

The Arizona referendum calls for the state Constitution to be amended to ban public colleges and other state and local agencies from granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in employment, contracting, and education-related decisions. —Peter Schmidt

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Tulane and Louisiana State U. Differ Over Governance of New Teaching Hospital

Louisiana State University and Tulane University appear to be at an impasse over governance of a new teaching hospital in New Orleans, according to news reports. At issue is how much control the Louisiana State system should have on the board of a 424-bed hospital, which is expected to open in 2013 and cost around .2-billion.

Last week Tulane officials approved a plan that would give LSU four seats on a 12-member board. The LSU system’s Board of Supervisors amended the plan today to give LSU five seats on an 11-member board, The Times-Picayune reported. LSU deserves the additional clout, officials told the New Orleans newspaper, because the university would be responsible for backing 0-million in bond debt.

“We need to be in control,” Hank Gowen, a member of the LSU board, said before the vote. “We are the ones who are going to borrow 0-million.”

According to the Associated Press, Tulane officials rejected the plan and issued a statement saying that LSU’s move “indicates that Tulane and LSU have fundamental and philosophical differences with respect to the board composition and the appropriate safeguards and independent oversight of the proposed academic medical center.”

Both medical schools’ teaching hospitals were flooded and badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina. The interim downtown hospital they plan to use until the new hospital is built faces financial pressures, in addition to tensions caused by the governance feud between the two universities. —Katherine Mangan

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Colleges Must Alter Their Business Models, Some Presidents Say

Washington — College leaders today urged their colleagues to change how they do business in light of the recession, during a conference here called “Thinking Big in a Crisis,” sponsored by the higher-education policy organizations Jobs for the Future, Education Sector, and the Lumina Foundation for Education.

Panelists warned that unless colleges reformed their business models, higher education could face the same fate as the housing and banking industries. They offered examples of how their institutions have cut costs while opening doors to more students.

Paul J. LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, said his institution now offers online classes and has opened three satellite commuter campuses. To attend those campuses, students pay about 40 percent of what full-time undergraduates pay to attend the main campus.

Mr. LeBlanc also said he believes that, in coming years, colleges will move away from using credit hours as a measure of achievement and instead rely on demonstrations of competency. “I think it’s appalling how little innovation has gone on in higher ed,” he added.

Eduardo J. Padrón, president of Miami Dade College, said that his institution, the largest community college in the country, now offers both two-year and four-year degrees.

“Higher education is not immune to change,” he said. —Austin Wright

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How the N.Y. Attorney General Will Use $13-Million From Loan Scandal

New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, plans to use the -million his office has collected from colleges and student-loan companies to create a Web-based student-loan center for borrowers and to run a nationwide public-service announcement about how to pay for college and minimize student-loan debt.

In 2007 and 2008, 14 lending companies and three colleges agreed to pay into a national education fund set up by Mr. Cuomo to settle claims arising from his investigations into conflicts of interest in student lending and deceptive marketing.

The attorney general announced last month that he was seeking applications from New York-based nonprofit groups and government entities through July 6 for grants to develop and put in place the loan center and the public-service campaign. Colleges are ineligible for the money.

Benjamin Lawsky, a special assistant to the attorney general, said that colleges had been excluded from the grants “in order to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest” in the wake of an investigation that examined improper practices at institutions of higher education. He said the objectivity of the information provided through the loan center or the public-service announcement could be compromised if any particular college were involved.

The attorney general had said when he collected the money that it would be used to educate high-school students and their families about the financial-aid process, but it wasn’t until May 20, when the attorney general’s office published a notice in the New York State Register, that Mr. Cuomo outlined how the funds would be used.

The notice said the Web-based student-loan center would provide free information to students, college graduates, and parents across the United States about how to minimize student-loan debt and how to choose the best loan options. It would also help distressed borrowers. The center would allow students and parents to “interact in real time,” the notice said, with people who are trained to answer questions about paying for college and repaying student loans.

The national public-service announcement would also provide information about how to minimize student-loan debt and how to choose the best student-loan options. The campaign would “use as spokespersons public figures, such as actors or musicians, who are popular among high-school and college students,” the notice said.

The projected start date for the grant contracts is January 1, 2010. —Sara Hebel

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Several U. of Wisconsin Medical-School Professors Accepted Large Corporate Payments

Thomas A. Zdeblick, an orthopedic surgeon, apparently isn’t the only doctor at the University of Wisconsin who has been collecting a substantial outside income from medical companies.

A tally by the Journal Sentinel of Milwaukee has now found that Dr. Zdeblick had at least six colleagues at the Wisconsin medical school who have also been receiving six-figure payments from makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

The newspaper reported in January that Dr. Zdeblick received more than -million from Medtronic, the medical device-maker, from 2003 to 2007. That led University of Wisconsin officials to declare that their policy of requiring doctors to state only whether they were collecting more than ,000 a year from outside sources — without declaring the actual figure — wasn’t sufficient to guard against possible abuses.

Such payments aren’t illegal, though critics, including U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, have questioned whether large payments to doctors might improperly influence their decisions in patient research and patient treatment.

The new cases at the University of Wisconsin described by the Journal Sentinel include Paul A. Anderson, a professor of orthopedic surgery who was paid 0,000 by Medtronic for eight days of work as a consultant; Ben K. Graf, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery who collected 0,000 in royalties from the medical-device manufacturer Smith & Nephew; and Clifford B. Tribus, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery who was paid 0,000 for royalties and 15 days of work as a speaker and consultant for Stryker Spine, another device company. —Paul Basken

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