Regent Hunter on Alcohol Policy in Gopher Stadium

Regent Hunter asks us to keep our priorities in mind. Remarks that the old Memorial Stadium, fondly remembered by some of us, was dry.

We have far more important things to worry about right now than shaking sabers at our State legislators, some of whom are strong supporters of the U.

Summer in Minnesota - It doesn't get any better than this!

(From the Strib)

Morgan Blood of Nowthen, Minn., caught this 23½-inch walleye -- her first ever -- on a lake near Walker.

Acted or Reacted - How Others See Us
No Alcohol in the House That Bob Built

From NCAA Football:

The University of Minnesota's Board of Regents has decided to go dry. The Board acted Wednesday to ban alcohol sales at all its on-campus venues, including the soon-to-open TCF Bank Stadium.

"Acted" might be a bit of stretch, actually. "Reacted" is closer to the truth, as the Minnesota State Legislature recently enacted a law mandating that if some fans would be able to buy alcohol at University sporting events, all fans of legal age had to be allowed to.

That seems like a silly law until you consider that the U of M planned to sell alcohol to people in TCF Bank Stadium's luxury boxes while making it unavailable in the cheap seats. I'm sure the Board had its reasons, but the Legislature stuck up for the little guy for once.

Of course, all this move does is correct a quirk that made the Metrodome doubly unique among Big Ten football stadiums.

The Humpty Dump was not only the Big Ten's only indoor venue; it was also the only one where students of legal age could buy alcohol during a game.

Minnesota is now one of only three schools which explicitly forbid anyone to have alcohol in their athletic venues. (Michigan and Ohio State are the others.) As for the rest of the schools? They just hope you don't wonder too much about what's going in those luxury boxes.

Still, the excitement around the opening of TCF Bank Stadium should build a bigger buzz around Gopher football than anything since the days of Murray Warmath. Tim Brewster and his crew had better be vigilant, however. If the team's performance drives the boosters to drink, they'll have to do it somewhere else.

UD destroys Schulz article

Immediately after getting up my own little post about a rather pompous article by Dr. Shulz - in which I noted the straw man nature of his argument - Margaret Soltan destroyed the article with one of her patented SOS [Scathing Online Schoolmarm] do-overs:

SOS offers a perfect example of the straw man argument.

Straw man plus just the sort of bland vapid reassurance you’d expect from a certain sort of doctor. This is ultimately arrogant writing that thinks you’re stupid. Don’t be taken in by it.

It’s written by the chair of the University of Minnesota psychiatry department, a locus of conflict of interest.

Let’s take a look.

Much has been written over the past few years about the relationship between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. So I would like to disclose the following right now: I have worked with multiple companies over the years on sponsored research and as a consultant, and I continue to do so. During this time I have published a number of papers regarding this work — including some pertinent negative results concerning the drugs these companies make. [Dull but okay writing. He needs to provide at least one link to a study he's been involved in, funded by a pertinent drug company, that arrived at seriously negative results. This is the first instance of bland reassurance in an opinion piece rife with it.]

A recent Pioneer Press report noted I have received less money from industry in the last year. Why? Because nothing is more important to me than the reputation of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School, and I am concerned that the media portrayal of all physician-industry relationships as bad could affect public perception. [This is just weird. Wacky. Where's the logic? We need hard numbers first of all -- the sort of thing notoriously missing from conflict of interest forms psychiatry professors give their universities -- if, of course, they give their universities the forms at all. Quite a number of them don't seem to bother with the paperwork. Many of those who do fudge the numbers like hell. This writer needs to talk to us about that... But as to the logic: Why should his caring so much about his school's rep mean he's received less money? And I mean -- we need to know if it's five or five thousand or five hundred thousand less, don't we? And here comes the straw man: Absolutely no one believes, argues, or writes that all of these relationships are bad. Set up a straw man and knock him down. How powerful.]

What the media stories do not mention are the advances that have been made because of these relationships, which are managed carefully by institutions such as the University of Minnesota, where the Institutional Review Board approves all studies for human subjects and the Sponsored Projects Administration negotiates all contracts with industry. [He thinks you're stupid, doesn't he? Doesn't he know that you know that things aren't managed carefully at all? That this is an ongoing national scandal? You know what he's doing? He's saying There there little woman. There there little man. It's all fine. You don't need to understand -- you don't have the capacity to understand -- the details and complexities here. Trust me.]

Physician-researchers need to partner with industry to develop new treatments. It is the system we have in place. The National Institutes of Mental Health do not fund development of new compounds in psychiatry; their focus is on funding basic science and mechanisms of action after approval. [Sure. True. No one has a problem with this. Get to the point.]

When it comes to clinical research to improve and develop medicines and bring them to market, it is industry that funds that work. And the research to develop new drugs is very expensive, costing $800 million and even up to $1 billion to get a drug discovered and available for patients. [How much improved are the improved meds you're talking about? Isn't one of the big points here that professors with financial interests in new, more expensive, but by no means better pills, are pushing those, thereby contributing to the health costs crisis? When do you plan to say something about this?]

When I consider the field of psychiatry, the advances made because of new medicines — studied in research institutions and developed by pharmaceutical companies — have been enormous and life-changing. Before we had effective medications, one out of two hospital beds was taken by a mentally ill patient. We no longer warehouse psychotic patients and drug them with opiates to “manage” them. Now, we have better ways. Better medications. [Who says? Do you think I'm dumb? Do you think I'm not aware of studies showing that many, many psychiatric meds are no more effective than placebos?]

Because of the partnerships between physicians and industry and the medications that have resulted from these relationships, many psychiatric patients were able to leave institutions. Now, because of the advances in psychiatric medicine, patients in our department — who are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and friends — can be treated as outpatients. Many have jobs, support families and contribute to society. [Bland, bland, prose to match Dr. Pangloss's happyface. At this point in reading, you should be telling this writer to eat shit.]

Are the psychiatric drugs we have now perfect? No. All drugs have side effects, and the drugs I prescribe my patients are no different. [Why don't you talk not merely about side effects but effectiveness? Relative effectiveness of new, expensive and old, inexpensive? Why don't you talk about all the people who shouldn't be taking these strong-side-effect, expensive drugs in the first place? About the fact that the pills are being over-prescribed unconscionably by you and your colleagues? Where is all that?] The leading edge of our research now focuses on predicting which medications, which compounds, will be effective for our patients. The goal remains to help people live independently, or with the fewest restraints on their freedom. In our department, we develop programs that integrate efficacious medications with effective psychosocial treatments. [Gag me. You're letting Mister Doctor use pompous big words -- efficacious?? -- and how's that different from effective?? Oh. It ain't -- you're letting him do that in order to make you think he's a big ol' authority and all that you shouldn't question. Tell him one more time to eat shit.] There are always new discoveries to be made, and it is truly unfortunate that the public is hearing only one side of the story from the media.

Do physician-industry relationships need to be managed? Absolutely. Has the increased scrutiny in the past couple of years resulted in constructive changes? Yes. But the answer is not to break these ties completely. My patients of the future are counting on them. [Pompous, self-righteous, self-serving. Why did the paper publish it? Because of who the writer is. But the writer is lazy and cynical and he thinks you're stupid.]

Great article in the Pioneer Press about Warren MacKenzie...

Warren is a wonderful man. His concern that all of us be able to afford a little non-plastic in our lives is quite remarkable. The Pioneer Press is to be congratulated for this excellent article and also the accompanying outstanding video. It is heartening to know that the good guys can also live long and prosper...

From the article:

Warren MacKenzie doesn't want you to collect his pottery. He wants you to like it, buy it ... and use it, without fear of breaking it.

MacKenzie began teaching ceramics at the University of Minnesota in 1953. The next year, he and Alix had their first exhibition of pottery from their new studio, at Walker Art Center.

The couple had two children. Alix died of cancer in 1962. In 1984, MacKenzie married Nancy Stevens, a fiber artist whom he had worked with at the U. He retired from teaching in 1990.

"I enjoyed the interaction with students ... but I was always thinking about making pots," he said.

The MacKenzies spend their days working in their respective studios; Nancy works out of the third floor of the couple's house.

Together, the MacKenzies recently attended the opening of "Warren MacKenzie: Legacy of an American Potter" at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco. In April, MacKenzie was named a "Master of the Medium" in ceramics by the James Renwick Alliance in Washington, D.C.

His pots can be found in museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington; the National Folk Art Museum in Tokyo; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

"Making a pot — that's the most fun for me," he said. "There are kiln people. There are glaze people. There are decorating people. There are mud people. I'm a mud person. That's where I get my greatest pleasure. I like to make pots."

He makes pots seven days a week, six hours a day.

MacKenzie hopes his pottery will enrich those who buy it.

"You can live in today's society without ever touching anything that is handmade, but I think you'll have a much less rich life," he said.

"I make a very good living selling pots inexpensively, because I make a lot of pots," MacKenzie said. "I can earn as much money by selling a lot of pots very inexpensively as another person can selling a few pots for a very high price. The question is, what do you need to live?"

Nancy MacKenzie attributes her husband's pricing strategy to his heritage. "It's so basic to him. He's a Scot, for one thing," she said. "He's opposed to all pretense."

Joan Mondale, a fellow potter, works with MacKenzie in his studio on Wednesday mornings. She said MacKenzie makes pottery — like her favorite cereal bowl — to "give people the good feeling of holding something that has been made by hand."

"We do have an awful lot of machine-made things — a lot of plastic — and I don't find those pots terribly satisfying," she said. "Warren's are satisfying."

He has no plans to retire. "You have to love to make pots. You really have to live your whole life for making pots," he said. "I hope that when I can't control the clay anymore, I'll know enough to quit. Because then it would just be putting in time. No good."

A fundraiser featuring some of Warren MacKenzie's older signed pieces will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. July 20 at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis. An anonymous donor gave the pieces to the Clay Center with the restriction that the proceeds be used to help potters rent studio space. The pots will be available for viewing July 17 at the center and at northernclaycenter.org. The event is free and open to the public.

Graduate Tuition at University of Minnesota

Thoughts of Regent Frobenius

(at recent Board of Regents meeting on the budget)

Unfortunately, there was no second and therefore no discussion.

This is sad.

I have often in the past seconded a motion that I oppose, simply to allow discussion.

From later remarks of the Regents I believe that many were sympathetic to Regent Frobenius. I also believe that in the upcoming year the University administration will be subjected to a little more scrutiny by the Regents than has been the case in recent times. Evidence for this opinion will be presented in further clips from the Regents meeting that I will put up when time is available.

Tomorrow I will be out of town - for a week - and there will be no further posts during that time.

Ciao.

For those interested in seeing the whole
unadulterated meeting, please see this link.

(you want the 6/24/09 video)

No Alcohol Aftermath - Truth, Not Baloney?

The Pioneer Press has a good article:

The total cost of going dry has yet to be determined, officials said, but athletics director Joel Maturi said compensation for suite buyers at TCF Bank Stadium and Williams and Mariucci arenas — all of which now will be dry — could come to about $1 million.

Associate athletics director Phil Esten said compensation will take the form of price reductions or items of value offered to fans.

The Board of Regents voted last year to allow liquor sales in the new football stadium, which opens in September, in premium seating areas but not general seating, which would have applied to Williams and Mariucci as well.

But legislators criticized the arrangement as elitist and passed a provision last session saying the U had to either sell to all fans or none.

U President Robert Bruininks didn't want to sell alcohol generally at an on-campus stadium, which meant the only option was going dry.

"(It's) an issue the Legislature should not have visited upon the University of Minnesota," Bruininks told regents at their meeting Wednesday.

Larson and Venora Hung were the only regents to vote against Bruininks' proposal to make the stadiums alcohol-free.

Several, however, mentioned going back to the Legislature to see if the law could be changed after this season.

One lawmaker, Rep. Pat Garofolo, R-Farmington, said Wednesday that he wants the U to reverse its decision so that everyone of legal age can buy alcohol at the new stadium.

Nobody has canceled a suite purchase over the alcohol issue, Maturi said, though several people have asked about what compensation might be offered to them.

All nonpremium seating for the new football stadium is sold out for 2009, and of the premium seating options, all the outdoor club seats and loge boxes have been sold, Esten said.

Thirty-two of the 37 suites have been sold, Maturi said, and about 200 of the 250 indoor club seats. Suites cost $45,000 per season, and indoor club seats go for $3,000, which means at least $375,000 in premium seating remains unsold with two months left until opening day.

The premium seating in the new stadium accounts for only about 5 percent of the seats but about 40 percent of overall stadium revenue, Bruininks said.

Forecasts projected the on-campus stadium would generate $3 million to $3.5 million more in net revenues than the Metrodome, where alcohol was for sale to anyone of legal age.

But those forecasts assumed the new stadium's premium seating would sell out, and it's unclear how much lower the stadium's revenues will be given the alcohol decision, Maturi said.

The concern is more about lost suite sales than lost revenue from the sale of alcohol, which he called "minimal in the overall scheme of things."

Wednesday's vote makes the U the third school in the Big Ten — along with Michigan and Ohio State — to have a completely alcohol-free football stadium.

Alcohol was not allowed in Memorial Stadium, the last place the Gophers played on campus before moving to the Metrodome in 1982. Fans will be able to tailgate with alcohol in designated areas outside the new stadium.

______________________

Given the sale of alcohol at University of Minnesota football games in the Dome, I think that President Bruininks is being hypocritical in making the House That Bob Built a dry one.

The no alcohol policy - except in premium seats - was clearly a marketing decision as can be demonstrated by careful examination of then Regent Metzen's remarks at the Board meeting a year ago. The idea was to make premium seats more valuable by allowing them the perk of alcohol.

So let's cut out the baloney about this being for the children... If this is the case where was Dr. B. all these years while alcohol was being sold in the Dome at Gopher football games?

And don't hold your breath waiting for the legislature to come around on this one. What Garofolo is up to is to force the U to sell alcohol throughout the stadium.

He plans to make us an offer we can't refuse...

Q: Why is this man smiling?

A: He is compensated to the tune of $740K p.a.
and has dodged, thus far, a salary cut?

(Maybe that's why his arms are crossed?)

The above picture of the CEO of the University of Minnesota appears in the current issue of the Minnesota Daily. Given the terrible situation at the U this seems like a strange pose. Maybe he is anticipating the upcoming football season in the House that Bob Built? This picture accompanies a telling piece: "Bruininks talks tuition increases, job cuts."

Elsewhere in the same issue, the Daily asks in an editorial:

Questions for our budgeteers

Is the well-off leadership at the University not thinking hard enough about alternative cost cutting or are they just not listening?

These questions beg of the University community the following: If our enlightened and bountifully compensated leaders cannot find more novel ways to reduce expenses, are they truly worth the salaries we afford them?

So maybe OurCEO is smiling because he is a fan of the late Steve Cannon. Cannon's famous sign off line was: "I got the money."

Another interesting thing about this picture is the body language. Usually crossed arms are considered a bad sign:

Arms can act as the doorway to the body and the self. When they are crossed, they form a closed defensive shield, blocking out the outside world.

Crossed arms may thus indicate anxiety which is either driven by a lack of trust in the other person or an internal discomfort and sense of vulnerability.

Crossed arms is a very obvious signal and if you do it in front of other people they will likely feel rejected and respond accordingly (including not agreeing with you).

Hmm...

Maybe there is something to this body language stuff?

Why are these people in so-called academic medicine?

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Several University 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 $19-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 $20,000 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 $150,000 by Medtronic for eight days of work as a consultant;

Ben K. Graf, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery who collected $770,000 in royalties from the medical-device manufacturer Smith & Nephew;

and Clifford B. Tribus, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery who was paid $310,000 for royalties and 15 days of work as a speaker and consultant for Stryker Spine, another device company.

—Paul Basken

Mrs. Bonzo Scores!

The lovely and talented Mrs. Bonzo has written a book that has been published by Yale University Press:

The Cosmopolitan Interior

Liberalism and the British Home (1870 - 1914)

It is available at Amazon (link above).

As I like to tell my friends, if you want to know the relationship of John Stuart Mill to interior design, this is the book to buy.

From a review:

“… takes a detailed look at many important issues relating to the Victorian home, including health and sanitation, the contribution of women as taste-makers … through the wave of revulsion that greeted Art Nouveau, to the creation of a new anti-cosmopolitan view of the “British” home. The bibliography … is a testimony to the exhaustive investigations of the author.”

Charlotte Gere, Art Newspaper