This is where I smile and thank myself for aiming low and taking that full ride to the best state school in my...um, state. If I hated a professor, it didn't matter...because that shit was free.

Hopefully they learnt their lesson.

I'm starting to feel sorry for her, although not that sorry. The whole suing thing tends to make it tough to sympathize with her.

These kids are too young to realize that if you're going to attempt to explore the ways that you can begin to speak about the possibilities of mobilizing a critical deconstruction of global warning, you're going to break some eggs.

Seriously, though, Dartmouth kids are tools. It's hard to pick a side.

This woman has a bright future in Time Warner's customer service department.

The person thought to be an asshole by many people thought to be assholes by me, may still be an asshole

this whole situation is so postmodern.

Unfortunately, theories of ecofeminism are extremely reductionist. They fail to take into account the parameters of systemic integration which are co-terminus with technological advances in post-modern society.

From the soon to be published manuscript: Jargon and Douchebaggery at 50 Grand a Year, by Professor Hugh G. Rection

@arguablythemostfamous: Yeah, I'd kind of like to deconstruct something, with a sledge hammer.

@moff: No, Moff -- she sounds horrid!

@PandoraSpocks:

With a Foreword by Buster Hymen.

@Bell County: Global warming, dufus. A global warning precedes a global time-out.

@PandoraSpocks: @depardoo: Edited by Ima Hoar.

@Helman: Oh, agreed! I meant sorry for her in the same way I felt sorry for my old boss (who decidedly and inarguably was horrid, as confirmed by firsthand experience), like: Wow, it must suck to be you and you should really clue the fuck up and take something useful away from this terrible experience, but sadly, that's not going to happen, is it?

@scroll_lock: Translaction by Sasha Wayne Kerr.

@moff:
I feel a little sorry for her, too. It's easy to be made to seem a nutcase by a bunch of jerky, entitled students.

But her terribly written emails and laughable notions about the legal system didn't help.

Maybe she has a case, I have no idea. If she hasn't figured it out by now, she should shut up and let her lawyer do the talking -- and writing.

@PandoraSpocks: I'd like to officially inform you that your mocking of ecofeminism, a serious subject, is clearly fascist demagoguery. I plan to name you in a lawsuit for infringing upon my freedoms (of all sorts). I will also be publishing a memoir in which I name names, so to speak. It will be called Confessions of a Gawkerer.

@scroll_lock:

With an Afterword by Professor Ibidertitzov, author of "The Red Nipple".

I like the logic here. One bad teacher means that all academics are a waste of time.

Engineering = JENGA!

@Seeräuber Jenny: I'm sorry, but Venkatesan is convinced that students and administrators were speaking in code to one another during class: [dartlog.net]

@CognitiveVomit: That only makes me feel more sorry for her. Which is not to condone her behavior or say she hasn't brought much of this upon herself.

Based on her photo, my guess is her goiter is making her cranky.

I have nothing to add but Ophelia Balls.

@cassandra: See now, if only Professor Venkatesan had decided to take leave of her reason and grace a few months back, maybe I could have convinced you and Pareene not to call me and my people tools? Eh. I'd have considered it in exchange for the convenient loss of my phone number by the Alumni Development office.

Anyone here recall when things were so bad that academics, stung by criticism of their jargon, started complaining about the "hegemony of clarity"?

@bytememehard: I would probably stay away from the comments about her physical appearance.

@CognitiveVomit: Wow. That interview is incredible - she's batshit crazy. I do feel sorry for her now because she seems like a possibly very bright person lost in the wilderness of her own mind. Very sad.

@moff: oops! Not that havng a goiter is in any way funny.

If I had those kids writing in my class, I would be upset too. It hurts to read their comments.

Amazing, the number of pre-puberty comedians responding here.
M I join in and give you a few belly laughs?
Tits.
Ass.
Poo=poo.
But wait! There's more!

@wobudong: Is that you, Professor Venkatesan?

Diaz@wobudong: Comment written by Fudd E. Duddy, Professor Emeritus.

Reminds me when I had to threaten my equally stupid professor with bodily harm and legal if he didn't allow me to graduate. It worked.

Legal action.

@depardoo: I love his stuff. Almost as great as the dissertation on onanism by Professor Jack Meoph.

@miss_msry: I find a simple sexual harrasment threat works well too.

@scroll_lock:

He's good, but a little derivative of the German philosopher, Adolf Oliver Nipples, don't you think?

I would like for there to be a movie made about bad professors NOT inspiring students and call it something like, Crappy Teachers Society, and then like at the end of the movie, all the kids go UNDER their desks instead of standing on top of them and say, one after another, "O, Craphead, My Craphead."

@depardoo: A bit of a hack, yes. This was first discussed by the noted expert of the history of S&M, Dom N. Attion.

@CodePink: There could be a scene where the teacher brings in a bagful of McDonald's cheeseburgers and throws one on each student's desk and is like, "Is this what you want to eat every day for the rest of your life?" And they're all like, "Yes, these are so fucking good."

(Check your email.)

@scroll_lock:

Oh yes, that piece was co-written by Anita Blojob.

@depardoo: She is the ex-wife of Iva Biggun. I understand she now is represented by big-wig attorney Sue D. Bastards.

@CodePink: @moff: And when one student's overbearing father won't let him play Puck in the school play, he can be like "ok, whatever" and then play Doom 3 for 48 hours straight.

@scroll_lock:

Yes, but the document review has been outsourced to two Chinese lawyers, Hu Kikee Mai Dikkee and Hu Flung Du.

@depardoo: I heard that from my friend Duncan Disorderly. I believe he got the news from Neil Downandeater.

@CognitiveVomit: Perfect. This whole case didn't seem complete without the paranoid delusions.

looks like she just let a wet fart slip in that picture...

[Her lawyer enters teh courtroom.] "The name is Jablomi. Haywood Jablomi."

Anyone else see the Irony of a blogger on Gawker flining around the Pompous Tool tag?

@stupidjerk:

Do you feel Jack's hot breath on the back of your neck?

@scroll_lock:

Who in turn read it in an article in a Manila newspaper penned by the prominent Philippino journalist, Balzon Chin.

Reading some of these comments feels like watching someone play Russian Roulette.

@moff Reminds me of (true story) the time in school I complained to my best friend that I'd received a veiled threat from our professor via email. My friend asked me to see the email which read, "Ms. M, I'm afraid unless you are doing a significant amount of work outside class, your attendance record will severely impact your final class grade." My friend took one look and said, "There's nothing veiled about that."

@depardoo:

Don't do it, dep. Step away from the keyboard and everything will be okay.

Besides, I just can't go through that again so soon after the emotional rollercoaster that was the execution of Hez and Unfun. Watching as a couple of folks threw themselves in front of a train in solidarity. All cresting in the heart-wrenching moment when, after playing a shell game with Jack, Virus with Shoes climbed out onto the ledge and threatened to jump if everyone were not returned in one piece. Followed by the elation of the Bobby Ewing in the shower moment as everyone reappeared with their dream-sequence explanations.

No, I cannot do that, again. It feels like a repeat reel of Desmond running naked from the hatch explosion. The only thing that I'm sure of in my emotionally frazzled state is that Jacob is Jack Ketch.

Their brains are not yet developed so they should not be able to sue anyone. A student I know (not to be named) actually said her prof DISCOVERED the enron scandal. He worked for the company that worked DISCOVERY for the email trail. Um, until they can listen and understand we shouldn't pay any attention to them.

Oh my God, that interview is a whole big bundle of crazy. This is probably the best part:

PV: One of the things that [this student] did, this is also really interesting, was that she would always ask me how to spell things. That was her thing. She would say how to do you spell this? How to you spell that? I mean-what am I supposed to do?-so I would tell her. One time Tom Cormen was sitting in the class, and she asked me, how many T's are in Gattaca. This was the kind of question she was asking, "how many T's are in Gattaca?," and I was about to answer her and Tom Cormen pre-empted me, "two t's." I'll leave you to interpret it.

TDR: No. No, I don't understand that.

PV: I have to tell you: it means tenure track.

TDR: Oh, okay.

PV: Because I wasn't tenured track.

TDR: Oh, okay, yes.

PV: They were trying to intimate that I wasn't ready for tenure track.

TDR: Yes, okay, I didn't realize that's what that meant.

@cassandra: I like this part:

PV: I never name called any student in that class. What happened was that I went into class after that whole clapping incident, and I said. 'What you did was horrific. What you did was really bad.' Not bad, I didn't accuse them of being bad, I said what you did was unacceptable. They started arguing with me. I said fine. You think you know everything. You think you know everything without the knowledge base to boot, without the training, you think you have a command of all the knowledge in the world at this stage in your life, then I'm sorry, that is fascism and that is demagoguery.

Because the first thing I think of when an insolent teenager argues with me is, "wow, this kid's just like Mussolini."

At least she didn't accuse them of being bad.

@MaelstromInTheMiddle:

Thanks for the advice - I took it. Bad day, yesterday.

I don't feel too bad for this professor, unless it's for the fact that she's being mocked on the internet, which is no fun for anyone (but what do we live for?). She probably really is a bad teacher. And it sucks to sit through a horribly taught class led by a domineering, overly-sensitive teacher. Maybe not as much as it sucks to live in Myanmar right now, but for entitled rich kids, it sucks.

I read the WSJ article and I have absolutely no clue where you are getting that is it is awful. He does make some comments that are justified against academia. As for the not trying really hard by the Dartmouth Alum, I did the same thing. I had papers that were so full of double meaning especially about the state of higher education and sometimes about the professor. One of my first graduate school professors could easily be intimidated. She actually got in my face about how she was a good teacher and had written a book and was a scholar and really smart. I had made a comment about how one of our books was written by an individual who came off as a "pompous ass" which most of the class agreed with and I back up. Apparently, this history professor was not used to intelligence so she went a little bat shit crazy. Compare this to the professor who taught me through three semesters of advanced statistics. We didn't agree on anything but he realized that that was ok. I still visit him to this day. So when Rago talks about this professor not being representative of most of the profs at Dartmouth, I see his point. The history pro