Last week’s faculty meeting was dominated by the looming fiscal crises that the department faces due to “shifts in funding priorities” by NIH & DARPA. Department Head, Dr. Michael Scheier, proposed a novel funding opportunity that he was made aware of 15 minutes before the meeting.
“I was going through my Inbox this morning,” said Scheier, “and I came across something that I think looks really promising. I got an email from a guy, he says he’s a prince in Nigeria. Now I don’t know what that means, because I didn’t think that Nigeria had a monarchy, but listen to what he has to say.”
Scheier then proceeded to read a rather long email, riddled with grammatical errors, from an individual claiming to be a “prince in exile” who had $1.56 billion in holdings that were locked out after the coup that overthrew his family. According to the author, Honorable and Nobel Prince William Shatner III, the only way to get out of the country with his money is to transfer the funds into an American bank account first. If the department was willing to just send Prince Shatner the account and routing numbers for the department, then the author stated he would be willing to give the department a 10% cut.
“If you do the math, that’s $156 million dollars!” exclaimed Scheier, “Now I don’t know you you’d all feel about this, okay, but I think it’s really something we should consider. Especially given our recent shortfall on graduate student stipends”
Overall, the faculty opinion appeared mixed on the idea.
“You know I think this is fascinating,” said Dr. Brian McWhinney, “Really interesting offer. But I’d like to say, that my experience working on the Niger-Congo languages, I’d want to clarify what he meant by ‘dire circumstances’. That could mean a lot of different things if translated incorrectly.”
“What’d I’d want to know is whether that’s in US dollars or Nigerian naira,” said Dr. Ken Kotovsky, “I mean that conversion rate is a real pain in the ass.”
Others were not quite a supportive.
“Are you f$%#ing kidding me!” said Dr. David Klahr. “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation? Our funds are locked in through the university. We’d have to get their approval and you know how long that’d take. He’d have found someone else before we even know what our account number is. Seems like a waste of time to me.”
Throughout the conversation, Dr. David Rakison kept interjecting “Zzzzzzzzzz” from his perch in the corner of the room.
Despite having six other agenda items, the entire faculty meeting was dominated by debate on the details and merits of the offer. No consensus was reached, however, beyond an agreement to “get more details” before the next faculty meeting.
I still think the best way to earn a quick buck is to sue some company, claiming patent infringement. I bet we can find $1 billion or so pretty easily!
That’s such a hot market right now. We could get a patent for the psychological processes behind patent trolling and then sue the patent trolls for trolling! Pretty sure that’d be an endless cycle of cash.
A misplaced comment from Brian:
“Actually, the proper translation of the Fulani phrase should not be “dire circumstances” but “sexual enhancement”. Of course I understand the interest in enlarging the departmental budget, but in view of the fact that we also recently won a major settlement for the copyright infringement of the Just-Mitchell patent on the human brain, I am not sure that we will be able to process both of these cash streams. Perhaps we could divert the Nigerian monies to the funding of the new CMU Summer Palace of Mindful Cognition Research in Beijing.
–Brian MacW”