This is Totally Sick and Wrong and I Would Buy It If I Had Money to Burn

 

DALLAS — The $16.50 gray fedora worn by Dallas strip club owner Jack Ruby when he fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 is for sale.


Heritage Auctions scheduled an auction Saturday for the Cavanagh fedora. President John F. Kennedy was slain on Nov. 22, 1963. Oswald was arrested for the assassination. Ruby fatally shot Oswald on Nov. 24, in an attack captured during a live TV broadcast as the suspected assassin was being escorted by law officers.

The auction house estimates the fedora, with Ruby’s name embossed inside in gold and the cost of the hat, will sell for more than $35,000. (Associated Press, The Houston Chronicle, 11/4/2009)

Person I Assumed Died Long Ago Dies

Claude Levi-Strauss, 1909-2009

Hasn't He Suffered Enough?

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua — Disgraced Texas financier R. Allen Stanford is being stripped of his knighthood in the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, the head of the government panel that approves the awards said Monday. (Anita Kentish, Associated Press, Houston Chronicle, November 2, 2009)

You

I saw this billboard driving north on the West Loop.



Then saw this one coming south on I-45 just before hitting the North Loop.



Any idea what they are all about? An homage to the great X song?

This is La Luz del Mundo, and Don't You Ever Forget It!

If you drive up US 59 from the  North Loop, you will soon pass a bizarre building on your right. After driving by it hundreds of times commuting to work, I finally had to stop. It is Iglesia La Luz del Mundo. This is it seen from the south:



It basically consists of two buildings--a main building, which as a Greek temple-style front and a huge golden dome beside it, and then another, smaller greek temple-like building off to the southwest of the main building. This is the smaller structure.



You can see that in front of the smaller temple is a circular colonnade.



It is perhaps the most beautiful (and certainly the most mysterious) feature of the whole complex.

The main building is not only deep, but very wide as well, due to two curved wings in front.



The building is fronted by very large marble columns (and is indeed made entirely of marble), topped with a pediment decorated with sculptural elements.



So what is this remarkable complex? La Luz del Mundo is a Protestant Christian sect headquartered in Guadalajara, Mexico.



When I was taking pictures, I got a chance to speak with the young watchman. He told me that the church took five years to build. He offered to let me see the interior, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures there. A shame, because as mindblowing as the outside is, the inside is even moreso.

Even though they clearly spent a fortune on this church, they really should have spent a little more on the sculptures.



This pediment is inhabited by various Biblical figures, but unlike a Greek pediment, the figures don't have a visual or spatial relationship with each other or with the architecture of the pediment. One thing that so appeals about the finest Greek temples is the unity of compsition. Everything fits together wonderfully and naturally. Here, it is as if the various elements were sculpted separately and then stuck onto the pediment randomly, with no sense of composition.

The front gates feature similarly clumsy sculptures.



La Luz del Mundo is not without controversies. And this building seems clumsy, grandiose, crass, and overpowering. Usually when one sees hispanic Protestant churches, one is struck by their modesty and humility. "Humility" is not a word that can be associated with La Luz del Mundo.

And yet, I like it. For two reasons I like it. First, it pays homage, in its own clunky way, to our classical heritage. And second, it is the attempt of a church to glorify God in the best way they know how. All church buildings used to be grand like this, and much of the greatest art ever made served the purpose of glory to God. Folks used to go to church every Sunday in their very best clothes. Nowadays you'll see people walking into church in t-shirts. I'm not a religious guy, but the idea of saving the very best for God has an ancient appeal. The Greeks did it with the Parthenon, and La Luz del Mundo have done it here.





(Crossposted on The Great God Pan Is Dead)

A Collection of Rice-BCM Links, Pro and Con

These links were compiled by Rebekah Drezek, a bioengineering professor. (At least I think she is responsible--how many bioengineering professors named Rebekah are there?) The links include lots of opinions both pro and con, as well as useful background information. As someone who doesn't have a huge stake in this issue (although I do have an opinion, of course), it is fascinating to see how this is playing out at Rice.

Seen on Beachton Street

Who's Buried at Forest Park Cemetery?

I wish I had know about "Find a Grave" before I checked out Forest Park Cemetery a couple of weeks ago. I would have definitely located the graves of Lighntnin' Hopkins and Jesse H. Jones, who are both buried there. (It is also the final resting place of Lloyd Bentson, Carla Faye Tucker, and numerous professional baseball players.)

If future rides take me past any cemeteries (which they undoubtedly shall), I will certainly find out if anyone interesting and notable is buried there and photograph the grave.

What One Faculty Member Has to Say About the Rice-BCM Merger

In my most recent post about the Rice-Baylor College of Medicine Merger, I got a comment from Dr. Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice. He had just given a talk (on October 26) about the merger, and the talk is posted online. I urge you to check it out--it's a bit long (over an hour) but worth listening to all the way through (including the questions at the end). His slides and referenced materials for the talk are also posted online.

His basic point is that the two stated reasons for the merger--increase in prestige for Rice and increased synergies between Rice and BCM--are not good enough, because the merger involves so much risk for Rice. In finance terms, the net risk-adjusted return appears to be negative.

Vardi in particular looked at the books for Rice and BCM. BCM took on a lot of debt to build its own hospital--which it abandoned halfway through the building process, which means it will get no cash flows from it to help repay the debt. (In fact, and this is shocking, BCM is in technical default right now.) But that's OK, right, because Rice is rich. As an alumnus, that's what I've always thought. But recall that we have a president who has been on a building spree--which may pay off in the future, but right now it has not only cost Rice a lot of money, but it forced us to start carrying debt. This debt was incurred in order to build the "Collaborative Research Center"--which has been renamed the "Bioscience Research Collaborative" for some reason. Ironically, the idea behind it was to give Rice the benefit of working with the hospitals and schools in the Medical Center without the cost and hassle of owning and operating a hospital. And double ironically, they built it and only one partner from TMC has chosen to cooperate. This facility was supposed to be rented out, in a sense, to researchers from TMC. So far, this goal has not been met.

So Vardi's point is that Rice, already burdened by debt, buys Baylor, and either our endowment shrinks a lot or we end up with more debt--either way, increasing our leverage and assuming the risks that go along with that leverage. He concedes that Rice won't shoulder the burden alone--that Rice and BCM will be asking deep-pocketed philanthropists to help pay. But the quantities of cash required to right the listing BCM ship are so massive that Rice will surely pay a lot of it.

Furthermore, he talks about the supposed synergies of the merger and makes the following points. First, there is nothing stopping Rice and BCM from collaborating on stuff right now, without a merger. We do it all the time (as well as collaborate with other institutions in TMC). And second, any increased synergy would cost money--for new facilities, new staff, etc. Which puts us right back at the state in the previous paragraph. More money, increased risk. (Obviously the current economy makes these kinds of decisions even riskier.)

Vardi speculates that their are other motives--that certain people at Rice (and BCM) are afraid that U.H. will come in and take it over as part of their quest to become a tier 1 university. Vardi suggested that if this is true, it's an administration concern (and perhaps a board of trustees concern), but not something that should matter to the faculty. The faculty should be happy to have more tier 1 universities in Houston. (Does Harvard regret sharing Boston with Cambridge, Tufts and B.U.?)

In the question and answer period, someone who is a faculty member and a member of the administration lashed out at Vardi for making unwarranted assumptions about the actions and motivations of the administration in this matter. He apologized, but said everything in his talk was based on publicly available information (which is posted on his website). Just as the Interim Report of the Rice University Faculty Merger Review Committee implied, one of the great frustrations is the secrecy involved. So this woman who spoke (and I am sorry I didn't get her name) is privy to information that Vardi doesn't have. If Vardi is putting an unoptimistic gloss on things, he is reflecting the facts as he knows them and the unease he must feel from the lack of transparency.

The conclusion is that BCM should be saved and may well go under or be permanently diminished if it isn't saved. But that Rice should not merge with BCM in order to save it.

Rice Merging With Baylor? Rice Faculty Say No!

That's the subtext to the "Interim Report of the Rice University Faculty Merger Review Committee." This report was completed in late August but only made public recently. The faculty on the committee come from a wide variety of academic departments. I only know one of them, Duane Windsor, who teaches the ethics and csr class for the Jones School.

Right from the very start, they express frustration with the lack of specifics about the merger.

The Faculty Merger Review Committee (FMRC) intended to make a full-scale report to the faculty at the start of the semester, but that has not been possible. Merger discussions have been going slowly, and many key decisions have not yet been made: the disposition of the incomplete hospital and its debt; the resolution of a clinical plan for Baylor College of Medicine (BCM); arrangements with participating hospitals, especially adult care hospitals; securing adequate philanthropic commitments; a reliable estimate of the expenses necessary to implement the merger; the amount of investment available for program enhancement and its allocation between Rice and Baylor; and plans for additional fundraising to make possible maximum academic benefits to Rice from a merger without starving existing or future non-medical related programs at Rice. Absent the resolution of these issues, it is impossible for the FMRC to fully assess the risks and benefits of a merger.

Am I reading to much into this if I say that there is a hint that the faculty are feeling they are being kept in the dark about certain things?  That would be my big worry--secret negotians and a plan presented as a fait accompli.Another frustration they state is that there is some information that has been devulged to the committee that the committee is not allowed to include in its reports.

For example: if a Rice/Baylor merger goes forward, Rice will make a substantial one-time investment to support the merger. The committee has been told the planned size of this investment. Because it is still subject to negotiations, the FMRC cannot disclose the amount. Therefore our ability to report to the faculty on the financial costs, including opportunity costs, of a merger is severely constrained. Part of Rice’s one-time investment will be in academic enhancement at BCM and Rice. An important issue for Rice faculty is the academic benefits that would flow from the portion of enhancement funds spent at Rice.

Then, constrained as they are, they make a list of risks and benefits. They're all worth reading, but I want to highlight the risks.

1. The merger would create one of the most unbalanced academic institutions in the US, with a very small university attached to a large medical school. This imbalance could impact Rice’s academic mission, culture, and its finances.
2. The financial risks to Rice of merging with BCM are significant and are amplified by the large size differential between the two institutions. The annual operating budget at BCM, for example, is almost three times the size of Rice's budget. Consequently, small fractional changes in total revenue of the combined institution could have a large impact on funds available for Rice’s traditional mission.
3. By joining with BCM, Rice will be acquiring a large exposure to a volatile industry with changing economics. Over time, e.g., NIH budgets may decline and the nation’s system of payments for medical services is likely to change.
4. The recent situation at BCM has led some of its staff to leave and others to contemplate leaving. It is possible that the BCM with which Rice would merge would be significantly weaker than the BCM of a few years ago.
5. Inadequate execution could limit anticipated benefits. (See Condition 6 below.)
6. Because BCM is in a turnaround situation, its financial future and the future of its institutional relationships are less predictable.

In short, Rice could end up stuck with a money-sucking white elephant that would everwhelm the university.

They, as faculty at Rice, are understandably afraid of becoming second bananas in an unequal partnership. And they are right to worry about that. It is critically important that Rice remain a strong, independent university, with its primary mission being to educate undergraduate and graduate students. If this merger causes this to become a secondary mission to, say, running a hospital, then it should not be permitted to go forward.

(See also this and this.)