Derelict of the Year 2017
2017 Winner: Ken McLaughlin
Beer Mile Champion: Alex YoungParty Info
TIME AND DATE: Friday, May 5th 8 PMLOCATION: 214 N Wilson Ave.
Parking Instructions: Street parking is plentiful.
Feel free to bring food, drinks, or donations.
Nominations
- Vladimir Zakharov
- Kenneth McLaughlin
- Kenneth McLaughlin
- Tom Kennedy
- Jonathan "A Short Note" Taylor
- Jonathan Taylor and David Taylor
- Regents' Professor Alan Newell
- Victoria, Party of Three
Vladimir Zakharov
Not many may know, and even fewer may believe, the acts of sheer bravery and dereliction of which this hero is capable. But the fact is that this man of science and poetry has scored highly on each index. Not wishing to embarrass him with tales of the former, I will concentrate on the latter. The story I tell goes back a few years. The time is summer and the place is a Physics Institute in Cargese, Corsica. Our chap was residing on the third floor in room 301 of a modest hotel run by a founder member of Corsica Libre and his two enormous sons who insisted in walking around in black berets and tight tee-shirts bursting with bulging biceps. One Saturday afternoon, after the conference had ended for the day, our hero fell into the dubious company of El Diablo, another conference attendee, and a generous sized bottle of Jack Daniel's. After hours of lively conversation at El Diablo's house interspersed with frequent outbursts of verse and punctuated by multilingual words of four letters, the bottle was finally drained. Our hero, being the gentleman that he is, invited El Diablo back to his room in the hotel where he had hidden under his bed a bottle of Kinzmaroulli blood red wine full of antioxidants.
From here on the story gets a bit fuzzy. Sufficeth to say, the next morning the gentleman residing in room 201 awoke to the drip, drip, drip of red dropping into his open mouth from a spreading stain on the ceiling. Monsieur Corsica Libre was summoned and then, upon noticing the likely origin of this unwelcome morning libation, descended, accompanied by his two enormous sons, on our hapless hero still, but not for long, blissfully asleep. Upon battering down the door, the trio found our hero sprawled across the bed and an empty bottle of red lying on its side on the floor directly above the mouth of the resident of room 201. The situation looked very bad for our hero. Not only was he awakened by an onslaught of angry and expletive ridden Corsican French from the Corsica Libre brigade but his head throbbed and he smelled like the unswept and unwashed floor of the Buffet Bar on a Sunday morning.
By a marvelous stroke of good luck, our hero was saved from instant demolition by the timely arrival of a colleague who was a well known avocat in the French legal system. Flurries of rapid French and the promise of generous restitution led to our hero being spared from the wrath of the prides of Corsica. Even then his fate hung on a knife edge. The pact was finally sealed when he offered, in addition to apologies and rubles, a signed copy of his latest publication, a book of poems. As good fortune would have it, Monsieur Corsica Libre himself was a bit of a poet, turning out ditties he penned between assignments consisting of vigorously discouraging any and all French mainland skeet shooters from extended stays on his beautiful island.
Our story has a happy ending. Our hero and Monsieur Corsica Libre became lifelong friends. What was never known, however, and remains a mystery to this day, is who was responsible for the horizontal bottle of red lying on its side and shedding its last drops onto the ceiling of room 201. Naturally our hero blames El Diablo. But I think otherwise. I think he, and only he, is the one who should receive the DOTY award.
Kenneth McLaughlin
I would like to nominate Ken McLaughlin for "a remarkable display of administrative skill".
Kenneth McLaughlin
Hi!
In honor of his final and most magnificent disappearance act we would like to nominate Professor Kenneth McLaughlin for DOTY.
For those few and unfortunate members of the department who never saw him perform, Ken could escape from any meeting. If you never received a phone call directing you to an obscure coffee shop 15 minutes after your meeting was supposed to begin, you missed the master at work. When Ken agreed to be head, we foolishly assumed that his disappearing days were over, that he would set aside his magic act. But like Houdini he had a trick up his sleeve. Calling Tom Kennedy unwittingly from his audience up to the stage, he vanished in a flash of light leaving Tom in his place. Tom, now interim head, was left to delight us with snarky comments from inside the trap which he hopes he will one day soon be allowed out of.
Like any great magician, Ken never revealed the secrets of his tricks and we are all left to wonder how he did it. For a dereliction of duty that should inspires us all, I can think of no finer DOTY than Ken McLaughlin.
Tom Kennedy
I nominate Tom Kennedy for his unabashed detestation of his job as intermin head. In particular, his countdown to the end of his duties at the end of every email to the department makes him a candidate for the DOTY award.
Jonathan "A Short Note" Taylor
The sine of x by x is quite a limit
And every calc student must hymn it
For you it works when x is rad
For David Taylor, that's just sad
He'd like to make use of the degree
And even wants you to agree!
To convince us all, and even aliens
He wrote "A note on degrees and radians"
Jonathan Taylor and David Taylor
For recent innovations in the pedagogy of trigonometry. Simply have students memorize this helpful hexagonal diagram, and the entire universe of identities will be at their beck and call.
Regents' Professor Alan Newell
Dear DOTY Committee and the UA Math Community at Large:
I am writing in enthusiastic support of awarding Alan C. Newell a lifetime achievement DOTY, for keeping the DOTY spirit alive by publicly ribbing his colleague with the same regularity as the Holy Fire in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for general dereliction, and for recognizing his early contributions to the development of the Beer Mile.
Though this nominee gets great pleasure out of writing yarns and plays with a twist, his yearly DOTY nomination of Vladimir Zakharov for a now infamous event which occurred in Corsica due to circumstances outside of Vladimir's control remains essentially unchanged. Nonetheless, his annual hitting of the send button at the end of April truly begins the DOTY season. Without this proverbial starting pistol, I believe the tradition would simply die away.
Alan truly embodies the modern spirit of the DOTY: both a scholar and a derelict, he's spent a lifetime pursuing academic and extracurricular activities with equal dogged determination, sometimes simultaneously. Consider, for instance, the [4:21 mark in the video] produced by the University of Arizona on the occasion of his receiving a somewhat less prestigious title than the DOTY (Regents' Professor), in which Dr. Ercolani describes how Alan brought his very own style to the pursuit of exercise:
"When we were at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, I remember some of the secretaries were quite amused, because he used to go on these daily jogs along the coast and carry a six-pack of beer with him."
Clearly, though we did not know it, Alan pioneered another, more recent, departmental tradition: the Beer Mile (except he had two extra beers, and did some nonlinear science afterwards--but what else could we expect?).
Vote Alan.
Sincerely,
An Informed Voter
Victoria, Party of Three
Most of grad school is filled with disappointment, which makes Friday an appealing day to go out and blow off steam. And there are events to celebrate in such bleak times. One grad student, Victoria Gershuny, took advantage of this when she passed comps. It was quite a lively event, with representatives from the School of Government and Public Policy also in attendance. As Victoria's condition declined throughout the night, the amusement of those around her turned to concern. And as if the awkwardness of two departments trying to engage in small talk was not enough, Victoria decided she should invite two more strangers to the party, her friends from the internet, who made it abundantly clear that they were there only for her. And in the end, even after all this socializing, and some minor altercations, Victoria ended up going home alone.