IN THE NEWS.

sine-moribus

Scandal erupted at the University of Pennsylvania today when it was discovered that, for more than twenty years, the campus bookstore had been selling wirebound notebooks decorated with the university arms in which the first and last words of the school motto had been obliterated. The former motto, “Leges sine moribus vanae” (“Laws are vain without morals”), was thus somewhat altered in meaning. In a quickly convened emergency meeting, the trustees voted to alter the “outdated and patriarchal” official motto to match the one printed on the notebooks, “acknowledging the latter as a better reflection of current conditions in university life.”

Comments

  1. Clay Potts says:

    In other University news, NCAA officials announced today, in response to Governor Corbett’s recent decision to sue the Association in Federal Court over the sanctions against Penn State, they are prepared to take even stiffer sanctions against the beleaguered university, by taking a page right out of the playbook of the Treaty of Versailles, and, to quote one high ranking member, “to place Penn State in the pre-industrial wasteland without access or means to resources.”, by requiring Penn State to revert immediately to its original 1855 charter and name of, “The Farmers High School of Pennsylvania”.

  2. Clay Potts says:

    And, In Business News:

    2013 has a number of pending corporate mergers on the horizon in order to better compete in economic realities of the 21st century:

    Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz announced they are merging to hopefully salvage their declining market shares, the new name will be “Chry-Merce”.

    Walmart and Kmart recently announced plans they are joining forces in a new discount department store geared towards capturing the under-served Pittsburgh inter-city consumer unable to shop at their suburban strip mall locations due to a lack of adequate public or private means of transportation; the new venture will be called, “WalKmart”.

    To sooth the nerves of anxious investors over the ever increasingly competitive nature and shrinking profits of the cellular phone industry, Verizon and Comcast have agreed to merge under the new name of “Veri-Com”.

    In order to gain a greater market share in the European Fire Engine Tire Market, Firestone is currently in negotiations with Michelin to produce a line of hi-performance fire engine tires under the brand name of “Mich-Fire”.
     
    And Finally, in Associations, Societies, and Trade Group News:
     
    The NRA has tentatively agreed to a request by The National Sleeveless Shirt Society for a merger between the two organizations.  Regardless of the NSSS’s continued public assertions that their only motivation to join forces with the NRA is due to their shared determination to protect every American’s Second Amendment “Right to Bear Arms”, industry analysts predict this is actually part of a covert strategy to leverage to their own advantage the NRA’s tremendous lobbying strength in Congress.  The new Association will be named, the “NRA”, as the NRA remains predictably unwilling to compromise even on the slightest matter of any issue relating to guns in America.

  3. Dr. Boli says:

    Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz have already tried merging once under the name “DaimlerChrysler.” It was only when the Germans realized that they had inadvertently made every Dodge Neon a Mercedes retroactively that they ran screaming back to Germany.

  4. Clay Potts says:

    This Morning’s Top Headline:

    TSA Decides to Eliminate T & A from Nation’s Airports; Move considered to have no impact on air safety; Stock in Fitness Centers plummet with announcement!

  5. C. Simon says:

    I looked on Wikipedia for the meaning of the sea monster between the two books. The world’s largest community-sourced encyclopedia had no comment about that, but it did contain this:

    Penn’s motto is based on a line from Horace’s III.24 (Book 3, Ode 24), quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt? (“of what avail empty laws without [good] morals?”) From 1756 to 1898, the motto read Sine Moribus Vanae. When it was pointed out that the motto could be translated as “Loose women without morals,” the university quickly changed the motto to literae sine moribus vanae (“Letters without morals [are] useless”). In 1932, all elements of the seal were revised, and as part of the redesign it was decided that the new motto “mutilated” Horace, and it was changed to its present wording, Leges Sine Moribus Vanae (“Laws without morals [are] useless”).[25]Hughes, Samuel (2002). “Whiskey, Loose Women, and Fig Leaves: The University’s seal has a curious history”. Pennsylvania Gazette 100 (3).

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